Looking at the raw numbers for traffic deaths can be deceiving, as they tend to go along with overall population. It's much better to look at things on a per capita basis to see which states are the most dangerous.
For instance, if there are two deadly accidents in a city with 1,000 people and four in a city with 100,000 people, the larger city is safer despite having twice as many deadly accidents. The same basic principle can be used to rank the states. So, where does Wisconsin fall on this list?
When ranking the states from the most traffic deaths per 100,000 people to the least, Wisconsin came in at 30th, so it is actually safer than the majority of the United States by a small degree. There were 10.05 deaths per 100,000 people in the state in 2010—the year for which data was analyzed. That added up to a grand total of 572 deaths during the year. They occurred in 528 separate accidents. A full 36 percent of them were related to drunk driving.
This DUI percentage was actually quite high, as the highest state—North Dakota—had only 44 percent of the deadly crashes linked back to drunk driving. Only a dozen states had more deadly DUI crashes than Wisconsin, and two of those states—Delaware and Massachusetts—were actually tied at 36 percent, so only ten states were truly higher.
The safest place to live was in the District of Columbia, where only 3.97 people were killed per 100,000, and the most dangerous was Wyoming, with 27.48 per 100,000.
If you've lost a loved one in a deadly crash, be sure that you look into your rights to compensation.
Source: Find the Data, "Compare Traffic Deaths by State," accessed April. 20, 2015