State of the Roads: Indigenous Road Safety
Road crashes are one of the main causes of death among Indigenous Australians, with 1 in 3 Indigenous deaths due to transport-related injury. Indigenous Australians are 3 times more likely to be killed in a road crash than non-Indigenous Australians. Indigenous casualties are more likely to be a passenger or pedestrian.
THE FACTS
- Road crashes constitute one of the main causes of death among Indigenous Australians (just under 30% of Indigenous deaths are due to transportrelated injury).
- Indigenous crashes are typically more severe in terms of injury outcomes and social cost. Indigenous Australians are 3 times more likely to be killed and 1.4 times more likely to be hospitalised due to a land transport crash than non Indigenous Australians.
- Indigenous casualties are more likely to be a passenger or pedestrian, while non-Indigenous casualties are more likely to be drivers or riders.
- Indigenous crash victims are slightly more likely than non-Indigenous to be female and typically five years younger in age.
- Indigenous crashes are more likely to occur at night, while non-Indigenous crashes are most prevalent in the afternoon.
Why are Indigenous people at higher risk?
- Characteristics of Indigenous road trauma are different in some ways to those of nonIndigenous road trauma, being a product of lifestyle, and cultural and behavioural factors, as well as environment.
This factsheet provides a snapshot of risk factors for Indigenous people based on findings from the North Queensland Rural and Remote Road Safety Study and an interrogation of Queensland crash data. This Australian-first program of research was undertaken by CARRS-Q and James Cook University’s Rural Health Research Unit in collaboration with Queensland Government. It specifically examined the reasons behind higher crash rates in rural and remote Queensland with a view to developing strategies to reduce the associated economic, medical and social costs.
