Hit by a car: Downtown, Westlake and Koreatown are worst

Screen grab crop of LAT map with story.

The LA Times unleashed the data desk on 665,000 reported traffic accidents in Los Angeles County from 2002 through 2013, then focused on more than 58,000 accidents involving pedestrians. From those, the Times identified what it calls the 817 most dangerous intersections for accidents between vehicles and people on foot. Not surprisingly, the problem intersections are most concentrated in the most dense sections of the city of Los Angeles: downtown, the Westlake district and Koreatown. On four blocks of South Alvarado Street, for instance, "90 people were hit by cars in a period of 12 years." There's some time-worthy maps and graphics with the package by Laura J. Nelson, Armand Emamdjomeh and Joseph Serna.

A Los Angeles Times analysis shows nearly a quarter of traffic accidents involving a pedestrian occur at less than 1% of the city's intersections. Many of the most dangerous crossings, which see a disproportionately high rate of crashes, are clustered in high-density areas between downtown Los Angeles and Hollywood….

More than 600 people on foot [downtown] were hit by cars at 48 intersections over those 12 years, or an average of one person per week. Eleven people were killed.

In Westlake, near MacArthur Park, 343 pedestrians were struck and three were killed in an area of less than one square mile.

In Koreatown, near the nexus of two Metro rail lines, more than 400 people on foot were hit by cars over the same period, 11 of them fatally.