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Wisconsin Crash Reporting Requirements

In Wisconsin, the crash reporting threshold is $1,000 in damage. Deadline to file: 10 days. Submit to: Police immediately; WisDOT if police did not report.

Damage threshold
$1,000

Report any crash with injury or death, $1,000 or more of damage to one person's property (or to a government-owned vehicle), or $200 or more of damage to other government property.

Deadline to file
10 days

Notify police immediately. If no law enforcement agency files a report, the driver must send a written report to WisDOT within 10 days.

Submit to
Police immediately; WisDOT if police did not report

Immediate notice goes to the local police, the county sheriff or traffic department, or a State Patrol officer. The 10-day written report, when required, goes to WisDOT and can be filed online.

Crash reporting threshold — where Wisconsin sits
Wisconsin sets $1,000 — higher than 10 of the 44 jurisdictions on this site. The range runs from $250 to $4,000.$250$4,000

Wisconsin sets $1,000 — higher than 10 of the 44 jurisdictions on this site. The range runs from $250 to $4,000.

How Wisconsin compares with every other state

What this means after a crash

$1,000 is the number to keep in mind, and it is a damage figure rather than an injury one: a crash with no one hurt still has to be reported once the damage reaches it. Only 10 of the 44 that set a dollar figure start lower. Note what the threshold is measured against — apparent damage at the scene, not the final repair invoice — so the call has to be made before anyone has priced anything.

You have 10 days. 23 of the 43 with a day count give you less time, 8 give you more. The clock runs from the crash, not from the insurance claim or the repair estimate, and it keeps running while you wait to hear whether the police filed a report of their own.

Who receives it matters as much as when. In Wisconsin the report goes to Police immediately; WisDOT if police did not report. An officer writing a report at the scene is not automatically the report the state is waiting for — where the two are separate, the table above says who receives yours.

Every statute cited for Wisconsin

Why the rule looks like this

More on Wisconsin

Checked against the primary sources above on September 22, 2026. If a figure here is wrong, tell us and we will fix it — what we have corrected so far is public.