Communities with high rates of pedestrians struck by motor vehicles may
miss out on mitigation resources and suffer worse medical outcomes if
crashes there go unreported to police. Using hospital records of
pedestrians treated for injuries sustained by a motor vehicle that were
not able to be linked with a corresponding police report, this paper
investigates the places, people, and communities in Illinois where
struck pedestrians are most likely to go unreported. We find that the
incidence of unreported struck pedestrians was not randomly distributed.
Blacks struck by a motor vehicle were disproportionately likely to go
unreported to police. Zip codes with the most unreported crashes per
capita on average had double the poverty rate and 2.6 times the carless
household rate as the rest of Illinois. Struck pedestrians diagnosed at
the hospital with an intoxicating substance went unreported to police
nearly 70% of the time. Generally, more severe head and thorax injuries
were more likely to be reported. Struck pedestrians outside of Cook
County averaged a 60% discordance rate, those within Cook County
averaged a discordance rate of about 50%. Struck pedestrian cases
reported to police averaged emergency department charges of about $2,500
more than unreported cases. Recommendations are made for community
outreach to stress the importance of reporting incidents to police,
along with adjusting case count numbers in police records using hospital
data.
