Data for the Study of Road Crashes in Australia

The Australian Economic Review, vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 222–30 The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research 2001Published by Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA* The author wishes to thank Professor Paul Miller, TheUniversity of Western Australia, for his support and con-structive comments, as well as session participants at thepresentation of an earlier version of this paper at the RoadSafety Research, Policing and Education Conference, Uni-versity House, Canberra, 28–30 November 1999.1. IntroductionThis article summarises the sources of roadcrash data in Australia and highlights theirstrengths, weaknesses and principal uses. Onlyone collection of a census of road crashes hasever been attempted in Australia. This was inthe Australian Capital Territory (ACT) in1965–66 (Troy and Butlin 1971). All otherroad crash databases in Australia are non-random samples of the total population of roadcrashes. Whilst there is considerable overlapbetween these samples, the level and accuracyof reporting of crash details is not uniform.These samples are either primary or secondarysource databases.