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From 2013 to 2018, the motor vehicle crash fatality rate for black, non-Hispanic Wisconsinites nearly doubled on an age-adjusted basis, according to data from the federal Centers for Disease Control.
In raw numbers, motor vehicle deaths for black Wisconsinites hit a high of 79 in 2017, rising from 31 in 2013 to 39 in 2014, 56 in 2015, and 62 in 2016.
Such deaths declined to 63 in 2018, the most recent year for which CDC data is available. But with the exception of 2017, the raw total and age-adjusted rate for black Wisconsinites in 2018 remained higher than any other year since 2000, the first year for which data is available.
The end result is that black Wisconsinites — who not long ago had lower motor vehicle fatality rates than white or Hispanic Wisconsinites or their national black peers — by 2018 had become more likely than any of these groups to die in a motor vehicle crash.
Many of these fatalities occurred in Milwaukee, which saw a sharp increase in speeding-related fatalities. While local officials have raised concerns about a reckless driving epidemic.
At the same time, several other factors are also worth considering, including the historic link between the economic cycle and motor vehicle fatalities, in which such fatalities typically decline during recessions and grow during periods of economic growth.
Also, public transit ridership — a far safer mode of transportation that automobile travel, and one on which African-Americans rely more than other groups — declined much more sharply in Milwaukee during the last decade than in the nation as a whole. Another potential contributor is a period of more than a decade, ending in 2016, during which free driver’s education was not available to students in the Milwaukee Public Schools.
This information is provided to Wisconsin Newspaper Association members as a service of the Wisconsin Policy Forum, the state’s leading resource for nonpartisan state and local government research and civic education. Learn more at wispolicyforum.org.
