Montgomery County is the third-most populous county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the 73rd-most populous in the United States. With a constant growing population, it is important to create an efficient and effective strategy to handle 911 calls countywide.

In less than 6 years, every resident in Montgomery County would have called 911 at least once.

A Quick Breakdown

There are 3 main categories of 911 calls: Fire, Traffic, and Emergency Medical Services (EMS). Approximately half of all 911 calls are related to an Emergency Medical Service incident.

What were the top 10 reasons for a 911 call?

Vehicle Accidents On Top

Vehicle accidents led the way as the #1 reason for 911 calls, beating out the next 5 incidents combined. However, vehicle accidents and disabled vehicle incidents together beat out the next 8 incidents combined. It is clear that traffic related incidents are a large reason for 911 calls.

Focusing on the Top 5

Readjusting Our Focus

Over the last 4 years, the top 5 incidents have been consistent, always within 1-3% of the previous year. In the previous graph, we saw that vehicle accidents and disabled vehicles led the way in being the top incidents. Here, we can see that that has been the case over the last 4 years, suggesting that these incidents are important to minimize.

Although we have noticed that EMS as a whole accounts for more 911 calls (due to the greater variety of EMS incidents), we are choosing to focus on vehicle accidents because it is just one incident that overtakes other causes for 911 calls by a large margin.

911 Calls for Vehicle Accidents by Hour and Day

A Look Back In Time

The two main time periods for car accident calls appear to be 7AM - 9AM and 3PM - 6PM, from Sunday to Thursday. These are fairly intuitive findings as they match the work commute times of most people.

The 5 Most Dangerous Intersections

The Dangers of Intersections

As the mean number of accidents per intersection is 7.75, the 5 most dangerous intersections have a much greater number of incidents than the mean.

Possible Solutions

In order to create a more efficient and effective strategy in responding to 911 calls, we suggest two solutions:

1. Police officers should take routes near or along the top 5 most dangerous interesections during the most likely time periods for a vehicle accident. For example, a police officer will, from 7AM to 9AM and 3PM to 6PM (Sunday - Thursday), reside along the specified top 5 intersections.

2. The County of Montgomery should assess if there are any design flaws that are facilitating vehicle accidents in the respective intersections.