In Australia from 2001 to 2006, Indigenous people had a higher rate of injury and death from road accidents than non-Indigenous people. Not a lot of research has been done in the area of Indigenous road safety until quite recently. Just how many Indigenous people are affected by road injuries has been hard to determine, for two main reasons:
- road crashes involving Indigenous people are not always reported
- information on a person’s Indigenous status is not always collected
Usually, unless a person is identified as being Indigenous, they are automatically classified as non-Indigenous. This means that Indigenous people are not always properly identified, which leads to a lower number of Indigenous people counted in road crashes than actually are involved. It is possible that identification of Indigenous status may be better in remote areas than in urban areas.