2020 Crash Report & 2016-2020 5-Year Crash Trends

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WATS just released the 2020 Crash Report. Every year, WATS updates information on traffic crashes, fatalities, and serious injuries in Washtenaw County. Crash factors are identified as emphasis areas in the report, including crashes involving intersections, lane departures, pedestrians, bicyclists, impaired drivers, deer, speeding, young drivers, and older drivers. Although crashes may involve more than one factor. We provide this report as a resource for Washtenaw County residents, communities, and agencies seeking to make transportation safer. Local agencies need quality crash data to make transportation improvement decisions, improve users’ safety, and allocate funds. For example, municipalities use this data to identify locations for improvement using federal safety funds. Citizens and legislators also use information on crash factors to call for changes in policy. 

The WATS crash report is updated annually based on the previous years crash data. WATS obtains crash data for municipalities and agencies from Michigan Traffic Crash Facts reporting tool, a tool provided by the Office of Highway Safety Planning who partners with the Michigan state police to obtain police reports. Last year, we updated the report to include 5-year trends for each of the crash factors that we focus on. 

There is all sorts of interesting information that you can dig into in the report. You’ll notice that for each crash factor, we provide tables with the 2020 numbers for each community in Washtenaw county. Some of the more notable observations from the 2020 report:

  • Washtenaw County (including the Monroe County portion of the City of Milan) recorded 7,164 crashes in 2020, a decrease of 36% from 11,353 in 2019. 

  • While the overall number of reported crashes decreased, the severe crash rate, shown in Table 1, increased 13% from 3.92 to 4.43. The severe crash rate is also 9% higher in 2020 than the prior 5-year average. 

  • In 2020, there was a significant decrease in vehicle miles traveled (VMT) due to the Covid-19 pandemic, down 15% from the previous 5-year average. 

  • In Washtenaw County, 82% of the 7,164 reported crashes involved property damage without injuries, 16% involved minor or possible injuries, and 1.9%, or 141 crashes, involved serious or fatal injuries. 

  • Pedestrian and bicycle related crashes are more common in urban areas, and most of these crashes are injury crashes. 25% of crashes involving pedestrians were either fatal or serious injury crashes. 

  • 43% (10 out of the 23) of fatal crashes in the county in 2020 involved a vehicle departing from their lane. 

If there is other information you’re interested in, if you’d like us to pull the five year trends for a specific factor for your community for example, or if there’s another data request you have, please feel free to contact us and we’d be happy to work with you. You can also access the Michigan Traffic Crash Facts reporting tool at www.michigantrafficcrashfacts.org. SEMCOG also has some great searchable resources and an interactive map for crash data.