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Wis. Stat. § 346.04

Obedience to traffic officers, signs and signals; fleeing from officer

Applied in 52 court decisions — leading case United States v. Howze (2003)

Most recently applied in State v. Michael K. Fermanich (June 2023)

1991 a. 316; 2001 a. 109; 2017 a. 13, 347

How often courts cite this section

19982000201020202023100
citing decisions per year

Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.

(1) No person including a personal delivery device operator shall fail or refuse to comply with any lawful order, signal, or direction of a traffic officer.

(2) No operator of a vehicle shall disobey the instructions of any official traffic sign or signal unless otherwise directed by a traffic officer.

(2t) No operator of a vehicle, after having received a visible or audible signal to stop his or her vehicle from a traffic officer, federal law enforcement officer, or marked or unmarked police vehicle that the operator knows or reasonably should know is being operated by a law enforcement officer, shall knowingly resist the officer by failing to stop his or her vehicle as promptly as safety reasonably permits.

(3) No operator of a vehicle, after having received a visual or audible signal from a traffic officer, federal law enforcement officer, or marked or unmarked police vehicle that the operator knows or reasonably should know is being operated by a law en- 4346.04 RULES OF THE ROAD forcement officer, shall knowingly flee or attempt to elude any officer by willful or wanton disregard of such signal so as to interfere with or endanger the operation of the police vehicle, the traffic officer, the law enforcement officer, other vehicles, or pedestrians, nor shall the operator increase the speed of the operator’s vehicle or extinguish the lights of the vehicle in an attempt to elude or flee.

(4) Subsection (2t) is not an included offense of sub. (3), but a person may not be convicted of violating both subs.

(2t) and (3) for acts arising out of the same incident or occurrence.

Official source: Wisconsin State Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain Wisconsin statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.