Austroads commissioned ARRB to provide information on key fatal and serious crash types in Australia and New Zealand, and to benchmark safety performance between jurisdictions and with overseas jurisdictions. This report presents findings from an analysis of Australian and New Zealand casualty crash data conducted in the first year of this four-year project. As far as the authors are aware, this is the first time that analyses combine the entire casualty dataset for Australia. In addition, the analysis presents findings in terms of fatal and serious outcomes, which are the key performance measures of the Safe System approach. Casualty crash data was supplied by each jurisdiction for the period 2001 to 2010. This data includes reported crashes where at least one person was injured and/or received medical treatment. The collection and checking of this data represented a significant task. A further major task was the reconciliation of data, because crash classification systems differ across Australian jurisdictions and New Zealand. In some cases, differences could not be resolved and data from certain jurisdictions were removed from some analyses. Despite these differences, the key crash types are broadly similar. The following results from this study represent significant insights into the current climate of road trauma and factors associated with casualty crashes in Australia and New Zealand: • road injuries of all severities have declined in both Australia and New Zealand since 2006 • there are marked differences in some of the analyses when all casualty crash data (i.e. fatal, serious and other) are compared to fatal and serious casualty crash data (i.e. the key performance measures under the Safe System) • key crash types based on fatal and serious injury outcomes for Australia are off-path, head-on, adjacent approaches, and same direction. For New Zealand key crash types are loss-of-control on curve, crossing/turning, loss-of-control on a straight, and rear-end/obstruction • same direction/rear-end crashes result in a significant number of fatal and serious injuries, and this is worthy of further research • the largest number of fatal and serious injuries appear to occur on roads zoned at 60 km/h or 70 km/h in Australia (generally the urban arterial road network), while in New Zealand, the greatest number of fatalities and serious injuries occur on rural roads. • there is a peak in deaths and serious injuries for both Australia and New Zealand at 18 years of age; and for both countries, the severity outcomes (fatal and serious injury compared to other injury outcomes) appear to increase with age. There are a number of substantial limitations to the results of these analyses, as detailed in Section 4.2 and Section 4.3, and information in this report should be treated with care. Potential applications of the database to other Austroads projects are discussed, including the validation and further development of the Australian National Risk Assessment Model. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting