Introduction
Road crashes are a major cause of injury-related hospitalisation in Australia. Deaths on the road receive most of the attention, but far more people survive a crash with injuries that need hospital care. This page uses the Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics (BITRE) hospitalised injury data to show who is being hurt and how this has changed between 2011 and 2021.
- 39,505 hospitalisations after road crashes in 2021
- +16% more than in 2011 (34,033)
- 10.5 days is the average hospital stay of an injured pedestrian, twice the 5.2 days for all road users
The page answers five questions in order. Each question has a chart, a short explanation and a "What this means" box.
Q1: Are fewer people being hospitalised after road crashes?
No. Hospitalisations rose from 34,033 in 2011 to 39,505 in 2021, an increase of 16%. They held flat in 2012 and fell clearly only in 2020, when COVID-19 restrictions reduced travel. Two changes in how hospitals count patients lowered some of the later counts (grey years), so the real rise may be a little larger than the chart shows.
Hospitalisations rose 16% from 2011 to 2021
Looking at single months shows how unusual 2020 was. Most months (109 of 132) had between 2,700 and 3,500 hospitalisations. Only one month in eleven years fell below 2,500: April 2020, the first full month of COVID-19 restrictions.
Only one month fell below 2,500: April 2020
Counts of hospitalisations from road traffic crashes, by year and by month of admission. Grey years: 2011 still counts Victorian patients treated only in an emergency department (Victoria stopped counting them from July 2012), and from June 2017 New South Wales no longer counts patients treated only in an emergency department or urgent care centre.
What this means: road crashes are putting more people in hospital, not fewer. The fall in 2020 came from less travel, not safer roads, and the count rose again in 2021.
Q2: Which road users are hospitalised, and which groups are growing?
The rise is not shared equally. Car occupants (drivers and passengers) are the largest group, with 18,539 hospitalisations in 2021, almost half of the total. The fastest growth is among cyclists: their hospitalisations rose by 51%, from 5,391 in 2011 to 8,163 in 2021. In 2020, when COVID-19 restrictions reduced travel, every other group fell, but cyclist hospitalisations rose by 14%. Pedestrian hospitalisations fell by 15% over the decade, yet Q3 shows that pedestrians have the most serious injuries.
Use the buttons to follow one group on its own scale.
Cyclists grew fastest: +51%
Counts of hospitalisations, not rates per person. Australia's population and the number of people cycling also changed between 2011 and 2021, so a higher count does not always mean a higher risk. Other road users groups six small categories, such as bus, truck and van occupants. When one group is selected, the y axis starts at zero and is rescaled to that group.
What this means: vulnerable road users carry a growing share of the harm. Cyclists went from 16% of hospitalisations in 2011 to 21% in 2021.
Q3: Which road users have the most serious injuries?
Counting hospitalisations does not show how badly people were hurt. A hospitalisation is one hospital stay, so a person admitted twice is counted twice. The number of days in hospital per case (bed days per case) is a sign of how serious the injuries are. Between 2016 and 2021 the average stay for all road traffic injuries was 5.23 days. Pedestrians stayed 10.46 days, twice as long, even though there were far fewer of them (15,268 hospitalisations). Cyclists are the opposite: many hospitalisations (44,736) but the shortest stays, 3.07 days.
Pedestrians stay longest: 10.5 days per case
Each point is one road user type, 2016-2021 (the years with bed day data after the July 2015 rule change). Hollow points are based on fewer than 1,000 cases, so their averages are less certain. Hover over or tap a point to see its values.
What this means: a pedestrian hit by a vehicle is likely to stay in hospital twice as long as the average road crash patient. Fewer pedestrian cases does not mean less harm.
Q4: How do age and sex shape who is hurt?
Behind each road user group are people of every age. Males make up 65% of road crash hospitalisations, and the gap is widest for young adults: among people aged 17 to 25, almost twice as many males as females were hospitalised. The pattern changes with age. At 75 and over, as many women as men are hospitalised (12,634 and 12,571). Switch to bed days per case to see the second half of the story: older people stay longest. People aged 75 and over stay about 11 days, twice the average of 5.23 days.
Men are hurt more often, but people aged 75+ stay longest
Counts of hospitalisations, not rates per person. The age groups are not the same width: 40-64 covers 25 years, 17-25 only 9 years, so wider groups have more people in them. Hospitalisations cover 2011-2021; bed days per case cover 2016-2021.
What this means: young men are hospitalised most often, but older road users, women as well as men, have the longest and most serious stays.
Q5: Where do injured people live, and how have states changed?
The national rise is not the same everywhere. Queensland's hospitalisations grew by 65%, from 6,322 in 2011 to 10,447 in 2021. Tasmania (+63%), the Northern Territory (+56%) and the ACT (+38%) also grew quickly, but from small numbers. New South Wales fell by 15%, partly because from 2017 its hospitals stopped counting patients treated only in an emergency department. Select your own state to see its trend on its own scale.
Queensland grew fastest of the large states: +65%
Counts by the state or territory where the injured person lives, not where the crash happened. Counts are not rates: New South Wales has about 16 times as many hospitalisations as the Northern Territory mainly because far more people live there. When one state is selected, the y axis starts at zero and is rescaled to that state, and states that would not fit are hidden. The states add up to 470 to 997 fewer than the national total each year, because some records have no state.
Hospitalisations of First Nations people rose from 1,167 in 2011 to 2,220 in 2021. Over the same years the number of records with Indigenous status not stated fell from 869 to 530, so better recording in hospitals explains part of this rise. These are counts, not rates, and they do not measure risk.
What this means: where you live changes the trend you see. Fast growth in Queensland and the territories shows that road safety gains are not shared across Australia.
Conclusion: what the five questions show
- Q1: road crash hospitalisations did not fall between 2011 and 2021; they rose by 16%, and the only clear fall, in 2020, came from less travel.
- Q2: car occupants are the largest group, but cyclist hospitalisations grew fastest (+51%).
- Q3: pedestrians have the most serious injuries, staying 10.46 days per case, twice the average.
- Q4: young men are hospitalised most often, while people aged 75 and over, women as much as men, stay longest.
- Q5: the trend differs by state; Queensland grew by 65%, while the New South Wales fall is partly a recording change.
What this means for you: take extra care around cyclists, pedestrians and older road users. They carry a large and growing share of the harm, and their injuries keep them in hospital longest.
About the data
Source. Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics (BITRE), Hospitalised Injury Data, national, state and territory, and First Nations workbooks, 2011-2021 (published September 2023). Only road traffic crashes are shown.
Processing. The team cleaned, filtered and aggregated the raw records in a KNIME workflow (Group5_RoadCrashInjuries_DataProcessing). Every yearly total was checked against BITRE's own published tables. The CSV files used by these charts are the workflow's outputs.
Limitations. The data are counts of hospitalisations, not rates per person, so they do not measure risk. Victoria (from July 2012) and New South Wales (from June 2017) changed how they count patients treated only in an emergency department, which lowers later counts. Bed days per case are shown only for 2016-2021, after a rule change in July 2015. Age groups have different widths.
Privacy and ethics. Hospital records are sensitive personal information. This page shows only the aggregated counts that BITRE has already published, so no person can be identified. First Nations counts are reported as counts with their recording caveat, not as a measure of risk.