Milwaukee An Outlier For Rising Traffic Deaths

Cleanup after a single-vehicle crash on E. Mason St. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

Across Wisconsin, deadly car crashes have been declining for two decades, except in Milwaukee County.

From 2002 to 2022, traffic fatalities decreased statewide by approximately 36.1%. In Milwaukee County, they increased 113.5%.

Year after year, Milwaukee County has typically broken from the rest of the state when it comes to traffic safety trends, according to a new report by the nonprofit Wisconsin Policy Forum, a good government organization. This trend has also been accompanied by a growing racial divide among traffic fatality victims.

The Policy Forum found that traffic fatalities among white residents in the state have been declining at the same time that they increased for Black and Hispanic residents. This data matches the findings in a recent traffic safety assessment conducted by the Milwaukee County Department of Transportation (MCDOT), which found that Black and American Indian county residents face higher rates of fatal and serious injury crashes.

From 2018 to 2022, the traffic fatality rate for Black residents of the state increased 9.8%. For Hispanic residents, “the increase since 2018 has been stark,” the Policy Forum notes, with the traffic fatality rate up by 45.3%.

“Since Milwaukee County is home to a majority of Wisconsin’s Black residents and a plurality of its Hispanic residents, it is not surprising that these trends have unfolded concurrently with an increase in crash fatalities there,” the Policy Forum reported.

Another finding from the report that mirrored the results of MCDOT’s safety assessment is that while Milwaukee County outpaces the rest of the state for traffic fatalities, it remains below the national rate for fatal crashes per 100,000.

Excessive speeding is a driving force behind the rising traffic fatalities in Milwaukee County. Over the past two decades, the number of “speeding-involved” fatal crashes has increased by 213%.

WPF considers the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on traffic fatalities, given the nationwide spike in deadly crashes in 2020 and 2021. But there again, Milwaukee County appears to be an outlier. For the state and the rest of the country, traffic fatalities spiked in the first two years of the pandemic and then subsided. In Milwaukee, traffic fatalities continued to rise at a rate that pre-dated the pandemic and continued rising at that rate as the rest of the country began to decline.

“Ultimately, recent trends in crash fatalities in Milwaukee County certainly continue to merit concern and action,” the policy forum concludes. “Recent responses from state and local policymakers show they are taking the problem seriously, but additional steps may be required to reverse the longterm trends we have discussed and put the region back on a trajectory toward safer streets.”

Read the full policy forum report on Urban Milwaukee.