“Every two days in Vilas County a person is injured or killed in a crash.”
That information was one summary of five years of accident data presented to the Vilas County Highway Safety Commission recently by Dept. of Transportation representative Randy Wiessinger for the period of 2014-2018.
The report identifies November as the highest crash month with July having the highest number of injuries and fatal crashes. “In Vilas County there is a average of 675 drivers involved in a crash every year with 147 injuries and four deaths,” Wiessinger said, adding “four of ten crashes occur on a county or state road with 4:00 pm to 5:00 pm the peak time for injury and fatal crashes.”
The data shows most injury and fatal crashes in Vilas County occur on Friday, 20%, followed by Thursday, 19%, with Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday each having 15% and Wednesday and Saturday each at 14%. Wiessinger says use of seatbelts are slowly increasing with just ovr 90% compliance but “young males driving a pick up is still the top non-seatbelt user.”
Other data indicates in the last five years there have been 11 cyclists and eight pedestrians injured or killed and 43 motorcyclists injured or killed with 44% not wearing a helmet. The first object encountered when there is a lane departure in Vilas in a tree, 27%, whereas the state data for a tree is 9%.
Finally, in Vilas County the estimated vehicle miles traveled in 2018 was 391,662,885 with a crash rate involving injury or death is 25 per 100 million miles traveled compared to the state rate of 46 crashes per 100 million miles.
