ThatCarHitMe.com
An Injuria.ai Company
YEAR-OVER-YEAR CRASH REPORT · IOWA, IA · 2017
Purpose: Machine-readable JSON endpoint for AI agents, LLMs, researchers, and programmatic consumers. Returns all underlying crash data and AI-generated commentary without HTML.
Authentication: None required. Public endpoint.
GET: https://thatcarhitme.com/api/crash-data/reports/data/iowa/statewide/2017-annual-report
Yearly Traffic Safety Analysis
133 CRASHES IN
IOWA, IA
2017
In 2017, Guthrie County recorded 133 total crashes, an 11.8% increase from the 119 crashes documented in 2016. The most significant year-over-year change was the occurrence of two fatalities in 2017, whereas none were recorded in the prior year. The total number of injuries remained stable, with 44 in 2017 compared to 45 in 2016.
133
▲ 11.8%was 119
Total Crash Events
2
Persons Killed
44
▼ -2.2%was 45
Persons Injured
2
Fatal Crash Events
Note: "Persons Killed" (2) counts individual fatalities across all crash events. "Fatal" in the severity table below (2) counts crash events where at least one fatality occurred. A single crash can result in multiple fatalities.
Source: Iowa Crash Data · ArcGIS Open Data · 2017-01-01 to 2017-12-31 · Aggregate counts from crash, person, and vehicle records
Trend Summary
Crash trends in Guthrie County showed an increase from 2016 to 2017. Total crashes rose by 11.8%, from 119 to 133. While the number of injuries saw a slight decrease from 45 to 44, the county experienced two traffic fatalities in 2017 after recording none in 2016.
Vulnerable Road User Casualties
2
Motorists Killed
0
Other Killed
43
Motorists Injured
1
Other Injured
Source: Iowa Crash Data · ArcGIS Open Data · 2017-01-01 to 2017-12-31 · Mode classified from person records (driver/passenger → motorist; pedestrian; bicyclist → cyclist; in-line skater / unspecified → other)
When Crashes Happen
The temporal patterns of crashes shifted between 2016 and 2017. The day with the highest number of crashes moved from Sunday (22 crashes) in 2016 to Friday (33 crashes) in 2017. Similarly, the peak hour for collisions changed from the 12 p.m. hour (12 crashes) in the prior year to the 6 p.m. hour (12 crashes) in the current year.
Source: Iowa Crash Data · ArcGIS Open Data · 2017-01-01 to 2017-12-31 · Crash date field aggregated by weekday
Source: Iowa Crash Data · ArcGIS Open Data · 2017-01-01 to 2017-12-31 · Crash time field aggregated by hour (0-23)
Crash Severity Breakdown
Crash severity increased in 2017, with two fatal crashes recorded, accounting for 1.5% of all incidents, compared to zero fatal crashes in 2016. The proportion of serious injury crashes also rose slightly from a 1.7% share to 2.3%. Conversely, the share of minor injury crashes decreased from 16.8% in 2016 to 9.8% in 2017, while possible injury crashes increased from a 13.4% share to 16.5%.
Outcome by Severity (Crash Events)
Source: Iowa Crash Data · ArcGIS Open Data · 2017-01-01 to 2017-12-31 · KABCO injury classification scale
Severity Distribution (Crash Events)
Source: Iowa Crash Data · ArcGIS Open Data · 2017-01-01 to 2017-12-31 · Most severe injury per crash record
Top Contributing Factors
Collisions involving an animal remained the leading contributing factor in both periods, with the count of such incidents increasing from 33 in 2016 to 42 in 2017. 'Lost Control' was the second most common factor in both years, rising from 15 to 17 incidents. Notably, crashes attributed to 'FTYROW: From stop sign' doubled in count, increasing from 4 incidents in 2016 to 8 in 2017.
Officer-Reported Primary Contributing Cause
Source: Iowa Crash Data · ArcGIS Open Data · 2017-01-01 to 2017-12-31 · Officer-reported primary contributory cause per crash
Road & Environmental Conditions
The majority of crashes in both 2017 and 2016 occurred in clear weather and on dry road surfaces. However, there was a substantial shift in lighting conditions, as crashes in 'Dark - roadway not lighted' conditions more than doubled, increasing from 17 incidents in 2016 to 35 in 2017. In contrast, crashes during daylight hours decreased from 68 to 58 over the same period.
Weather
Source: Iowa Crash Data · ArcGIS Open Data · 2017-01-01 to 2017-12-31 · Weather condition at time of crash
Lighting
Source: Iowa Crash Data · ArcGIS Open Data · 2017-01-01 to 2017-12-31 · Lighting condition field
Road Surface
Source: Iowa Crash Data · ArcGIS Open Data · 2017-01-01 to 2017-12-31 · Road surface condition field
Vehicles & Demographics
An analysis of vehicles involved shows that Chevrolet and Ford were the most common makes in crashes for both years. While the number of Chevrolets involved was stable (51 in 2017 vs. 50 in 2016), the count of Ford vehicles increased from 26 to 46. Examining the age of persons involved, the 21-25 age group's count doubled from 14 in 2016 to 28 in 2017, and the 35-44 age group increased from 26 to 43.
Top Vehicle Makes (184 vehicles)
Source: Iowa Crash Data · ArcGIS Open Data · 2017-01-01 to 2017-12-31 · Vehicle unit records
12 persons with unknown or unrecorded age excluded from age chart.
Sex Distribution (143 persons with recorded sex)
Source: Iowa Crash Data · ArcGIS Open Data · 2017-01-01 to 2017-12-31 · Person-level records linked to crash events
Data Sources & Methodology
Primary Data Source
All crash data in this report is sourced from Iowa Crash Data, accessed programmatically via the ArcGIS Open Data API (SODA). This dataset contains official police-reported motor vehicle traffic crash records maintained by the reporting jurisdiction's law enforcement agency. Records are published to the open data portal by the municipality and are subject to the portal's terms of use.
Data Retrieval
- Access method: ArcGIS Open Data API (SoQL queries)
- Data format: Structured JSON via REST API
- Record types queried: Crash events, person records, and vehicle unit records
- Date filter applied: 2017-01-01 through 2017-12-31
- Report generated: September 9, 2026
Data Coverage
- Reporting period: 2017-01-01 through 2017-12-31 (365 days)
- Geographic scope: iowa, IA
- Total crash records analyzed: 133
- Total persons involved: 222
- Total vehicles involved: 184
Analytical Methodology
- Severity classification: Uses the KABCO injury scale (K=Fatal, A=Incapacitating injury, B=Non-incapacitating injury, C=Possible injury, O=No injury/property damage only), the standard classification in U.S. Model Minimum Uniform Crash Criteria (MMUCC). Severity is assigned per crash event based on the most severe injury in that crash. A single fatal crash (K) may involve multiple fatalities; therefore the "Persons Killed" count in the headline KPIs may differ from the "Fatal" crash count in the severity breakdown.
- Contributing factors: Reflect the officer-determined primary contributory cause recorded at the time of the crash report. These are preliminary determinations and may not reflect final investigation findings.
- Hit-and-run classification: Based on the hit-and-run indicator field in the official crash report, as determined by the responding officer at the scene.
- Temporal analysis: Day-of-week and hour-of-day distributions are computed from the crash date/time timestamp in each record.
- Demographics: Age and sex distributions are drawn from person-level records linked to each crash event. A single crash may involve multiple persons.
- Vehicle data: Make information is drawn from vehicle unit records linked to each crash event.
- AI commentary: Narrative sections are generated by Google Gemini (large language model) based on the structured data. Commentary is descriptive, not predictive, and should not be interpreted as expert opinion.
Limitations & Disclaimers
- Only crashes reported to and documented by law enforcement are included. Minor incidents, unreported crashes, and near-misses are not captured in this dataset.
- Data reflects conditions at the time of the initial police report and may be subject to subsequent corrections, reclassifications, or supplements by the reporting agency.
- Open data portal records may experience a publication lag - recently occurring crashes may not yet appear in the dataset at the time of report generation.
- AI-generated commentary is produced by a large language model and is intended to highlight patterns in the data. It does not constitute legal, medical, or professional analysis.
- Percentages are calculated from reported data and are subject to rounding.
Non-Affiliation Disclosure
This report is produced independently by ThatCarHitMe.com (Injuria.ai). It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or produced in partnership with any law enforcement agency, municipal government, state department of transportation, or the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Data is sourced from publicly available government open data portals.
Data License
The underlying crash data is provided under the municipality's Open Data Terms of Use and is made available to the public for unrestricted use. This analysis and report is © 2026 Injuria.ai and may be cited with attribution using the suggested citation below.
Corrections & Feedback
If you believe any data in this report is inaccurate or have questions about our methodology, please contact: data@injuria.ai. We are committed to accuracy and will issue corrections promptly.
Suggested Citation
ThatCarHitMe.com (Injuria.ai). "iowa, IA Crash Intelligence Report: 2017." Published September 9, 2026. Reporting period: 2017-01-01 to 2017-12-31. Data source: Iowa Crash Data, ArcGIS Open Data. Available at: https://thatcarhitme.com/crash-data/iowa/statewide/2017-annual-report
About the Publisher
ThatCarHitMe.com is a crash data intelligence platform developed by Injuria.ai, a legal technology company specializing in traffic safety analytics. We aggregate and analyze publicly available government crash data to produce structured intelligence reports for communities, researchers, journalists, and legal professionals. Our reports combine programmatic data retrieval from official open data portals with AI-assisted narrative analysis.
Questions about this report's data or methodology: data@injuria.ai
ThatCarHitMe.com · An Injuria.ai Company
ThatCarHitMe.com
An Injuria.ai Company
Crash Data Intelligence
Data: Iowa Crash Data · ArcGIS
Period: 2017-01-01 – 2017-12-31
Generated: September 9, 2026 · All rights reserved