Citation

Mitchell RJ, Bambach MR, Grzebieta RH, Williamson AM. J. Australas. Coll. Road Saf. 2014; 25(3): 15-22.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, Australasian College of Road Safety)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Road trauma identified using hospital admission records or police-reported crashes are susceptible to changes in policy and resourcing. This research compares temporal trends in police, hospital and linked police-hospital records for non- fatal road trauma for road users by injury severity during 2001 to 2009 in New South Wales, Australia. Hospital records showed significantly increasing injury trends for motorcyclists and pedal cyclists (6.3% and 5.5%) and significantly decreasing trends for motor vehicle occupants and pedestrians (1.7% and 2.2%) per year whereas, for police-reported crashes, there were significant decreases for pedal cycle, motor vehicle and pedestrian casualties (1.5%, 3.8% and 5.2%), and a significant increase for motorcyclists (1.8%) per year. Differences in the annual percent change over time between hospital and police-reported crashes are evident which may influence policymaking. Policy makers should endeavour to review road casualty trends from a range of data collections to inform policy development regarding road safety.

Keywords: Road trauma, Data linkage, Policy, Injury severity, Police data, Hospital data

Language: en