Transport accidents are a leading cause of injury, both fatal and non-fatal. The primary purpose of this publication is to provide a broad overview of serious injury due to land transport accidents in Australia in the one-year period 200304, the latest year for which data are available. The main focus is on accidents involving road vehicles travelling on public roads (called travelling in traffic). Road vehicles include motor vehicles, pedal cycles and other road vehicles such as trams, animals or animal-drawn vehicles (when they travel on the road).
Serious injuryis defined for this report as an injury which results in the person being admitted to hospital, and subsequently discharged alive either on the same day or after one or more nights stay in a hospital bed (i.e. deaths are excluded).
This report presents estimates of the numbers of persons seriously injured in Australia due to land transport accidents, including road traffic crashes, in the one-year period of 2003-04. Trends in injury rates in road traffic crashes are examined over a five-year period, 1999-00 to 2003-04.
Publication available from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare website