1997 Oklahoma Traffic Crash Facts

NHTSA · 1997 · ROSA P / Oklahoma Highway Safety Office

archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified

Get this paper ↗ (full text — opens at the source; we link to it, we don't host it)

Summary

The "1997 Oklahoma Traffic Crash Facts" report, published by the Oklahoma Highway Safety Office, provides a comprehensive statistical analysis of traffic safety in Oklahoma for the 1997 calendar year. The document aims to present detailed data on crashes, injuries, and fatalities to inform public safety efforts. The data is derived from the Accident Records Division of the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety, which maintains a database of crashes reported by law enforcement agencies statewide. The report excludes non-traffic incidents, such as those occurring on private property or involving deliberate acts, and utilizes the KABCO scale to classify injury severity, ranging from fatal (K) to no injury (O). The report details that in 1997, there were 79,755 reported traffic crashes involving 139,462 drivers. Of these, 32,949 crashes resulted in injury or death (KABC crashes), affecting 52,929 persons. There were 729 fatal crashes claiming 846 lives, representing a 9.2% increase in fatalities and a 7.8% increase in fatal crashes compared to 1996. The mileage death rate rose 4% to 2.4 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles. Demographically, males accounted for 64% of fatalities and 72% of drivers in fatal crashes. Temporal analysis revealed that Fridays had the highest crash volume, while Sundays had the highest fatality rate. May was the deadliest month, and the hour between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. saw the most crashes and fatalities. Safety equipment usage was a significant finding, with 73.6% of fatality victims who should have been using restraints not doing so. Among the 846 fatalities, 548 were drivers, 220 were passengers, 70 were pedestrians, 5 were bicyclists, and 3 were in parked cars. The report also breaks down data by county, highway class, and specific road user types, including motorcyclists, school bus occupants, and pedalcyclists. For instance, it highlights alcohol involvement in injury severity and notes that cellular telephone usage was tracked as a contributing cause. The document includes comparative data from 1992 to 1997, showing trends in fatalities and injuries across Oklahoma’s counties, with Tulsa and Oklahoma counties consistently reporting the highest numbers of crashes and fatalities. The significance of this report lies in its role as a foundational dataset for traffic safety policy and enforcement in Oklahoma. By identifying high-risk periods, locations, and behaviors—such as the correlation between non-use of safety belts and fatalities, or the prevalence of crashes during evening hours—the report supports targeted interventions. It provides a baseline for evaluating the effectiveness of highway safety programs and offers granular data for local agencies to address specific regional issues, such as alcohol-related crashes in counties with liquor-by-the-drink laws.

Key finding

In 1997, Oklahoma recorded 846 traffic fatalities and 79,755 reported crashes involving 139,462 drivers, with a mileage death rate of 2.4 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles.

Methodology

dataset

Provenance

The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed. Discovered via bulk_ingest_rosap on 2026-05-23 (6 acquisition events logged).

Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.

Topics

Ranked by relevance to this paper. Hover a topic for its definition.

• incidence prevalence
• fatality injury trends
• demographic disparities

Information type

What kind of knowledge this paper contributes, grouped by family — independent of topic (what it is about) and method (how it was studied).

• Empirical Findings: crash risk outcomes