Overall, according to the dataset, the factors that put you at the highest risk of injury by car crash in Chicago are to be a man between the ages of 20 and 40 driving a Toyota. However, this is just the categories with the most frequency. The explanation for this is likely that Toyotas are the most popular car for Chicago residents, and men who are between ages 20 and 40 represent a large proportion of the driving population.
When comparing the datasets from Halloween 2022 and a day in October in 2023, there is not a notable difference between the two. Overall, the original data set from Halloween had 968 items and the new data set from October 17 2023 had 963 items. There was little difference in the overall number of crashes on both days. This suggests that Halloween is not significantly more dangerous than other days. In both 2022 and 2023 toyotas took up the most crashes. In 2022 and 2023, Illinois license plates took up the most car crashes. In both 2022 and 2023, car crashes with contact at the front took up the highest proportion of crashes and crashes with contact on the left side were least common. The data for passengers was very similar between 2022 and 2023 in that 20-40 year olds represented the highest proportion of crashes for both datasets. In 2022 and 2023 about 92% of victims were not injured. Additionally, in both 2022 and 2023 the proportion of men and women in crashes was fairly similar, and the number of men involved in crashes only minorly decreased in 2023.
However, there were also differences between the 2022 and 2023 data. In the 2022 dataset, Nissan cars took up the least number of crashes but in 2023 Honda cars took up the least number. In 2022 cars from Washington took up the least proportion of crashes, and in 2023 Florida took up the smallest proportion. In 2022 5.88% of people had non-incapacitating injuries vs in 2023 7.54% of people got non-incapacitating injuries. In 2022, 1.65% of people involved in car crashes sustained incapacitating injuries but in 2023, only 0.62% of people involved in car crashes sustained incapacitating injuries.
Besides these comparisons, there are additional insights we can draw from the data. For example, in 92.7% of car crashes on Halloween, the victim did not sustain any injuries suggesting that while there was a high frequency of crashes they were not as dangerous as people might think. Moreover, when you combine this insight with the fact that most car crashes were from the front, it suggests that front impact crashes are unlikely to cause incapacitating (if any) injuries. The year that the car was made did not have as much of an impact on the frequency of crashes. The frequency of crashes increased as cars got newer, but this is probably just because there are more newer cars on the road as people buy more cars. Most of the car crashes occurred in central Chicago, with Ashland Avenue and Western Avenue being the sites of the most crashes. However, the difference in crash frequency between these two streets and other streets was only about 5 or 6 crashes, which is not a significant difference. Thus, while there do seem to be certain risk factors for car crashes in Chicago, driving a car on Halloween is not one of them.