Method & limits
About SafeCross AI
SafeCross AI is a student research project. It ranks intersections by relative crash risk and compares route options by how many high-risk intersections each one passes.
How the ranking works
A model trained on New York City's crash history, the layout of the roads and recent crash activity gives every intersection a risk tier for the latest weekly snapshot:
- Highest-priority (top 10%) are the intersections counted as "high-risk" on routes.
- Elevated is the next tier down (roughly the top 25%).
Tiers are local: each intersection is compared with the 200 intersections nearest to it (about a kilometre around it in New York City), so the top 10% means the riskiest tenth of its own neighbourhood, not of the whole city. The zoomed-out area view still compares whole areas with each other, so you can see where risk is higher overall.
These are rankings, not forecasts. They do not say a crash will happen to you, and a route with fewer flagged intersections is not guaranteed to be safe.
Westchester County is an unvalidated estimate. The model was trained on New York City crashes. Westchester has no crash records in this project, so its intersections are ranked on road design alone, against each other rather than against New York City, and nothing has checked them against real crashes.
Limitations
- One present-day street map. The model learns from crash history going back to 2012, but road data comes from today's OpenStreetMap.
- Counts are approximate. An intersection counts as "passed" if it is within about 25 metres of the route. Large intersections can be counted more than once.
- Neighbors share history. Part of each ranking comes from crashes at intersections within 150 to 400 metres, so neighboring intersections tend to rank alike.
- A recent snapshot, not live conditions.
Model results
Terms of use and privacy
Draft text. The site owner should set a contact address and have this reviewed before sharing the app publicly.
SafeCross AI is provided for information only, as is, with no warranty. It is not a navigation system or a safety guarantee, and it is not for emergencies. Follow traffic laws and use your own judgement.
Terms
Privacy
- What you enter. The start, destination and travel mode you type (or your location, if you tap "Use my location") are sent to this app's server, which passes them to Google to calculate routes. See the
Google Privacy Policy.
- What this app keeps. Route results are held only in your browser's memory while the page is open. The server does not save addresses or routes. Your browser stores two small preferences on your device: whether you have seen the intro tour, and whether you dismissed the iPhone install tip. There are no advertising or analytics cookies.
- Hosting. The host may keep standard technical logs (such as IP addresses and request times). This app also counts searches per visitor, in memory, to limit abuse.
- Maps in your browser. The map is a Google Map, so Google Maps scripts load in your browser and Google may set cookies or collect usage data as described in its privacy policy.
Questions: your-email@example.com