There has been a flurry of stories recently where a car slams into a local business, usually on a corner. Just in the past couple months, Four Pegs, MagBar, and the Silver Dollar were victims of this. MagBar in particular is famous for these crashes, with a history of crashes into the second street bar. This has happened enough to where it's become a colloquialism, and even earned an urban dictionary definition.
Although its a bit morbidly funny how this keeps happening to the same building, it is also a serious issue. MagBar is located on Second Street, one of many one-way urban streets that has been slated for conversion to two-way. Second Street and other one-ways have been infamous for their high-speeds, with the one-way direction likely encouraging drivers to speed. These high speeds can kill, especially in areas with high pedestrian activity such as Old Louisville.
The recent set of crashes inspired the creation of the MagBar Index, an attempt at quantifying the danger posed by Louisville’s roads. The index quantifies the risk each road has of getting magbarred using crash data between 2018 and 2022, road speeds, and road direction. There are definitely other factors at play, such as COVID, which decreased the amount of people on the road; these are just local and quantifiable factors. The mapped index only covers the urban core of Louisville, as many outer-county roads are not lined with buildings that can be magbarred.
The dashboard for the project can be accessed below, or here if you are on a mobile device.
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