Dangerous roads for walking

I've had criticisms of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign over the years, but in general they share my goals and they do good work. Case in point is their report The Region's Most Dangerous Roads for Walking released back in March. Based on police reports, they provide maps of car crashes that killed pedestrians in 2008, 2009 and 2010 (although the Google Maps limitations make it hard to see them all at once), and they list all the stroads in the New York metro area and Connecticut where five or more people were killed over that three-year period.

It is in a spirit of constructive criticism that I suggest that fatalities per road is not the best way to compare roads. Roads have different lengths, so it makes more sense to compare fatalities per mile. This is a little tricky, because it usually involves some fraction of a fatality, but it you can get past that in your mind you get a better measure of dangerousness. So here, ladies and gentlemen, are New York City's most dangerous stroads, measured on a per-mile basis:

Stroad	Borough	Maximum width (feet)	2008-2010 fatalities	Length (miles)	Fatalities per mile
Brighton Beach Avenue	Brooklyn	95	6	1	6
Bowery	Manhattan	100	5	1.2	4.17
Broadway	Bronx	100	7	3	2.33
Fourteenth Street	Manhattan	85	4	2.2	1.82
Gun Hill Road	Bronx	100	5	3.5	1.43
West Street	Manhattan	195	7	5	1.4
Grand Concourse	Bronx	180	6	5	1.2
Ocean Parkway	Brooklyn	200	6	5.4	1.11
21st Street	Queens	100	4	3.7	1.08
Kings Highway	Brooklyn	135	7	6.7	1.04
Eastern Parkway	Brooklyn	210	4	4	1
Broadway	Manhattan	145	13	13	1
Seventh Avenue	Manhattan	145	5	5	1
Amsterdam Avenue	Manhattan	100	6	6.8	0.88
Avenue U	Brooklyn	80	4	4.8	0.83
Queens Boulevard	Queens	190	6	7.5	0.8
Third Avenue	Manhattan	100	5	6.4	0.78
Fourth Avenue	Brooklyn	120	4	5.5	0.73
Atlantic Avenue	Brooklyn	100	7	10	0.7
Union Turnpike	Queens	100	6	10	0.6
Jamaica Avenue	Queens	90	6	10	0.6
Richmond Avenue	Staten Island	100	4	7	0.57

I should point out that there may be others with at least one fatality per mile, but not listed by Tri-State because they were less than five miles long. Maybe someone at Tri-State can take a look and share that data.

The scariest ones are short stroads like Brighton Beach Avenue and the Bowery. With two bridge exits crossing it, I know exactly why the Bowery is the way it is. You can see on a similar map, CrashStat from Tri-State member organization Transportation Alternatives, that the part of the Bowery up by Gemma and the old CBGB's is not the really dangerous part. Every year, three or four people die for the convenience of Staten Islanders.

Crashes resulting in pedestrian or cyclist injury or fatality, 2007-2009, from CrashStat by Transportation Alternatives

But according CrashStat, the fatalities are pretty evenly spaced on Brighton Beach Avenue. Why six fatalities in three years?