2004 Wisconsin Traffic Crash Facts
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Summary
The "2004 Wisconsin Traffic Crash Facts" report, published by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation in 2005, provides a comprehensive statistical analysis of motor vehicle traffic crashes in Wisconsin for the year 2004. The document serves as a resource for traffic safety professionals, aiming to reduce injuries and fatalities by identifying causal factors. It explicitly frames traffic crashes as avoidable events caused by specific variables rather than accidental occurrences. The data is derived from the DOT/DMV Traffic Accident Database, which compiles information from MV4000 Wisconsin Motor Vehicle Accident Reports filed by state and local law enforcement agencies. In 2004, Wisconsin recorded 128,308 total traffic crashes, resulting in 784 fatalities and 55,258 injuries across 38,451 reported injury crashes and 714 fatal crashes. Of the injured, 10% sustained incapacitating injuries. The estimated fatality rate was 1.30 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, a 7.1% decrease from the previous year. Alcohol and speed were significant contributing factors: 42% of fatalities occurred in alcohol-related crashes, and 33% in speed-related crashes, with 19% involving both. Among drivers tested in fatal crashes, 36% had a blood alcohol concentration of .08 or above. Safety equipment usage was notably low among victims; 59% of those killed in passenger car and light truck crashes were not using safety restraints, and 77% of motorcyclists killed were not wearing helmets. The report details demographic and geographic distributions of crashes. Sixty percent of all crashes occurred on county trunk and local roads rather than state highways or interstates. Motorcyclists accounted for 10% of all fatalities, while pedestrians and bicyclists combined accounted for 9%. The data highlights temporal patterns, noting that one person was killed every 11.2 hours and injured every 9.5 minutes. Crash involvement rates and severity were analyzed by driver age, gender, and role, with specific attention to vulnerable populations such as school bus occupants, pedestrians, and bicyclists. The document also includes a fifteen-year summary (1990–2004) of crash trends, licensed drivers, and registered vehicles, showing a general increase in vehicle miles traveled alongside fluctuating fatality rates. The significance of this report lies in its role as a foundational dataset for behavioral highway safety programs. By parsing statewide counts into detailed categories—including crash type, location, time of day, and contributing circumstances—the Wisconsin Department of Transportation identifies specific risk factors to target in safety interventions. The findings underscore the critical impact of alcohol impairment, speeding, and non-use of safety restraints and helmets on crash severity. This data supports evidence-based policy making and resource allocation for traffic safety advocacy, providing a clear picture of the human and economic consequences of traffic crashes in Wisconsin.
Key finding
In 2004, Wisconsin recorded 784 traffic fatalities and 55,258 injuries across 128,308 reported crashes, with 42% of fatalities occurring in alcohol-related incidents and 59% of passenger vehicle occupants killed not wearing safety belts.
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).
| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | rosap | — | — | 2 | 2026-05-23 |
| archive | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-23 |
| extract | success | cached | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
| clean | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-01 |
| chunk | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-01 |
| embed | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-02 |
| enrich | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-23 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-23 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 3 | 2026-06-10 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 19 | 2026-06-11 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.
Topics
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- incidence prevalence
- demographic disparities
- fatality injury trends
- vru crash typology
- comparative international
- crash typology
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