Volume 193 - Issue 10
Trends in the incidence of hospitalisation for injuries resulting from non-traffic crashes in New South Wales, July 1998 to June 2007
Authors: Clare E Bradley, James E Harrison and Geoffrey I Henley
Med J Aust 2010; 193 (10): 620. || doi: 10.5694/j.1326-5377.2010.tb04079.x
Published online: 15 November 2010
Published online: 15 November 2010
To the Editor: It is incorrect for Chong and colleagues to state that “during the financial year 2006–07, 32 777 people were admitted to hospital in Australia due to road crashes”. It is also wrong for them to claim “it is often not clear how many of these road crashes are traffic crashes, and how many are non-traffic crashes”.1 Henley and Harrison report that there were 52 066 people seriously (but not fatally) injured due to land transport injury in 2006–07, and 32 777 of these (63.0%) occurred in traffic (on-road) accidents.2 A further 13 639 (26.2%) land transport injury cases in that year were explicitly described as non-traffic (off-road) accidents.
The National Injury Surveillance Unit of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare regularly publishes transport injury-specific analyses, including reports on land transport injuries (both traffic and non-traffic), rail-related transport injuries and transport injuries involving Indigenous Australians. The most recent of these reports is Henley and Harrison’s.2 In addition to the statistics mentioned above, they also report that the national age-standardised rate of non-traffic transport injuries was 66.5 per 100 000 population. In the previous year, this rate was 67.2 per 100 000 population.3 The next report in this series, to be published shortly, will include analysis of national trends in the rate of non-traffic transport injuries over the period 2000–01 to 2007–08.
References
- Chong S, Du W, Hatfield J. Trends in the incidence of hospitalisation for injuries resulting from non-traffic crashes in New South Wales, July 1998 to June 2007. Med J Aust 2010; 193: 223-226.
- Henley G, Harrison JE. Serious injury due to land transport accidents, Australia 2006–07. Canberra: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2009. (AIHW Cat. No. INJCAT 129; Injury research and statistics series no. 53.) http://www.aihw.gov.au/publications/inj/injcat-129-11033/injcat-129-11033.pdf (accessed Oct 2010).
- Berry JG, Harrison JE. Serious injury due to land transport accidents, Australia, 2005–06. Canberra: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2008. (AIHW Cat. No. INJCAT 113; Injury research and statistics series no. 42). http://www.nisu.flinders. edu.au/pubs/reports/2008/injcat113.pdf (accessed Oct 2010).