Scottsdale analysis finds KSI crashes concentrated in South/Old Town; ped/bike crashes overrepresented at intersections and at night

Scottsdale transportation staff and outside consultants presented a data-driven overview of traffic crashes and emerging safety priorities to the Transportation Commission on April 17, 2025, saying the city’s crash record from 2019–2023 shows concentrated risk in South Scottsdale and Old Town.

Dr. Russo, a researcher working with the project team from Northern Arizona University, said the analysis combines two sources of police-reported crash data and covers the most recent five years: “the crash data that we’re using in this analysis is from the most recent 5 years, 2019 through 2023,” he said. He and T.Y. Lin consultant Ryan (senior transportation planner, T.Y. Lin) walked commissioners through totals, severities and where crashes cluster.

The consultants said the combined dataset contains roughly 18,000 vehicle-only crashes plus about 700 pedestrian and bicycle crashes, for just under 19,000 total crashes and roughly 500 suspected fatal or serious injury crashes (KSI) across the five years. Pedestrian and bicycle crashes accounted for a much higher KSI share than vehicle-only crashes: the city-supplied ped/bike dataset showed about 15.4% of ped/bike crashes were KSI, versus roughly 2% among vehicle-only crashes in the ADOT dataset.

Why it matters: Commissioners heard that the distribution of serious crashes is not uniform. Consultants’ maps and heat maps show the greatest concentrations of crashes — and…