Run Philly Is Mapping Running-Related Harassment, Accidents in Philly

The quest: to pinpoint incident hot spots around town.

Photo by G. Widman for Visit Philadelphia

Photo by G. Widman for Visit Philadelphia

Attention, runners: Run Philly is in need of some crowdsourcing momentum to get a very worthy project off the ground. The site’s founder, Alon Abramson, whom you may know better as the brains and legs behind West Philly Runners, just kicked off an initiative to collect intel on running-related incidents, like harassment and accidents, in an effort to track where and when such incidents occur. 

“The idea came to me when I was reading about people encountering a lot of harassment near Paine’s Park and hearing folks chime in that this was a persistent issue,” he wrote to me in an email. “My intentions are to use the information to map the incidents so that we can identify some hot spots where incidents seem to take place.”

Abramson has just posted a web form on Run Philly to collect the information. It asks you to identify the kind of incident you were involved in, with some pre-made categories (i.e. “Verbally harassed/threatened by a pedestrian,” “Involved in a collision with a cyclist,” and etc.); provide the address or intersection where the incident took place, along with the date; and include additional details about the incident in question. Of course, if you are a victim of a crime, you should report it to police.

For the next few months, Abramson says he’ll be collecting data and plotting it on a map, with the hope of posting his findings on Run Philly later this fall. “I imagine the data will correlate pretty strongly with maps that show where runners run most, but it will still be useful to indicate areas where safety (as related to road crossings, crime or harassment) is a concern,” he said.

Submit your incident report here.

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