2008 Virginia Traffic Crash Facts
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 2008 Virginia Traffic Crash Facts report, published by the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, provides a comprehensive statistical overview of traffic safety in the Commonwealth for the calendar year 2008. The document serves as a resource for traffic safety professionals, aiming to facilitate problem identification, education, and the promotion of community safety through detailed data analysis. It aggregates statewide statistics, demographic breakdowns, and jurisdiction-specific data to illustrate trends in crashes, fatalities, and injuries. The report utilizes police-reported data to categorize incidents into fatal, personal injury, and property damage crashes. Key metrics include total crashes, fatalities, injuries, and rates normalized by vehicle miles traveled and licensed drivers. The analysis covers various dimensions, including monthly trends, time-of-day distributions, vehicle types, and contributing factors such as speeding and alcohol impairment. Data is further disaggregated by gender, age, and geographic location, providing granular statistics for counties, cities, and towns. Definitions are strictly applied, such as classifying a fatality as a death within 30 days of a crash and an alcohol-related crash as one where a driver, bicyclist, or pedestrian was listed as drinking. In 2008, Virginia recorded 135,282 reportable traffic crashes, representing a 6.96 percent decrease from 2007. Fatalities dropped significantly by 19.98 percent to 821, while injuries saw a marginal 0.45 percent increase to 69,130. The death rate per 100 million vehicle miles decreased by 20 percent to 1.00. Alcohol remained a critical factor, with 354 fatalities and 7,000 injuries in alcohol-related crashes, though these figures also decreased from the previous year. Speeding was implicated in 26,409 crashes where the speed limit was exceeded. Demographic data revealed that males accounted for the majority of fatalities (587) and injuries (32,733). The 21-to-25 age group experienced the highest number of injuries (9,277), while the 21-to-25 and 41-to-45 age groups had the highest fatality counts. Temporal analysis showed that fatal crashes peaked between 6:00 PM and 7:59 PM, whereas injury crashes were most frequent between 3:00 PM and 5:59 PM. The significance of this report lies in its detailed documentation of safety improvements and persistent risks. The substantial decline in fatalities and the death rate suggests positive trends in traffic safety outcomes, potentially linked to enforcement or behavioral changes. However, the increase in DUI convictions (9.32 percent) and the high volume of injuries indicate ongoing challenges. The granular jurisdictional data allows for targeted interventions, highlighting areas with higher death rates per driver, such as Sussex County (1.45) and Amelia County (0.94), compared to lower-risk areas like Fairfax County (0.04). This data supports evidence-based policy making and resource allocation for highway safety initiatives.
Key finding
In 2008, Virginia recorded 821 traffic fatalities, a 19.98 percent decrease from 2007, and 135,282 reportable crashes, a 6.96 percent decrease from the previous year.
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
Ranked by relevance to this paper. Hover a topic for its definition.
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