County Executive David Crowley and Milwaukee Area Safe Streets Taskforce Release New Motor Vehicle Collision Dashboard

MILWAUKEE – Reckless driving has reached dangerous levels in Milwaukee County, directly affecting the overall health of the community. Since 2014, fatal crashes have increased drastically throughout Milwaukee County at a higher rate than the rest of the country. Understanding and developing strategies to improve community health starts with collecting the data. To achieve this, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley and the Milwaukee Area Safe Streets Taskforce (MASST) released a new Motor Vehicle Collision (MVC) Dashboard on Monday, March 11, 2024.

“Making informed, data-driven decisions has been a key tenant of my administration. To effectively combat reckless driving in Milwaukee County, we must know what we’re up against,” said Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley. “Motor vehicle collisions are completely preventable. Enhancing the safety of our roads for all who use them is one of the most important issues facing the health and well-being of our community, and we all have a part to play.”

The MVC Dashboard is part of a three-phase plan by MASST. Following the release of this dashboard, MASST will analyze the data to better identify and understand hotspots for crashes of different types in the community and incorporate that into this dashboard. Phase three includes making policy recommendations, informed by this data and expert input, on what measures should be enacted to make streets safer across Milwaukee County.

“With over 25,000 crashes causing injuries and deaths in Milwaukee County per year– or about 3 crashes per hour – effectively addressing motor vehicle collisions in our community is no small issue,” said Dr. Ben Weston, Chief Health Policy Advisor for Milwaukee County. “Until now, visualizing these 25,000 crashes has been challenging. Though the data has been there, it is only as helpful as our ability to visualize, understand, and act upon it. This dashboard moves us one step closer to creating safer streets for all.”

The MVC Dashboard allows the end user to filter the data based on many different criteria, including municipality, demographics of individuals involved in the crash, and the day of the week and time the collisions occurred. Other filters include crash characteristics such as bicycle-involved, pedestrian-involved, crashes in school zones, or distracted drivers.

“There is an undeniable urgency to reverse the tragic trends of lives lost on our streets through the simple act of going from one place to the next. Milwaukee County’s Motor Vehicle Crash Dashboard is a substantial step towards that reversal,” said Donna Brown-Martin, Director of Milwaukee County Department of Transportation. “MCDOT commits to continuing our work on reducing traffic violence throughout Milwaukee County and will exhaust all funding options, technological innovations, infrastructure improvements and policy changes until we reach Vision Zero.”

The Milwaukee Area Safe Streets Taskforce is a broad, community-engaged collaborative group with members from academia, fire and EMS, law enforcement, local, regional, and state government, and community organizations. This public-private partnership demonstrates the importance of cross-sector collaboration to make positive, sustainable change in the Milwaukee community.

The Motor Vehicle Collision Dashboard can be found at county.milwaukee.gov/MVC or on the MCDOT Complete Community Transportation Planning Project homepage at county.milwaukee.gov/CompleteCommunities.

NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. It has not been verified for its accuracy or completeness.