Road Safety Issues Involving Aboriginal People in Western Australia

Dr. Rina Cercarelli
Injury Research Centre
Department of Public Health
The University of Western Australia
35 Stirling Highway
Crawley, Western Australia 6009

Tel: (08) 9380 1306
Fax: (08) 9380 1199
E-mail: rina@dph.uwa.edu.au

Abstract

Aboriginal people are over-represented in road crashes in Western Australia. Using data from the Western Australian Road Injury Database, it will be shown that while injuries and deaths from road crashes involving non-Aboriginal people have been decreasing since 1971 in Western Australia, they have been increasing for Aboriginal people over this time period. This presentation will also show that the two most common types of crashes involving Aboriginal people in Western Australia are single vehicle crashes and crashes involving pedestrians. Possible reasons for this will be discussed. Other factors such as age, gender, area of residence, crash type, and road user type will also be examined. These results will be considered in the context of the Western Australian road safety strategy for Aboriginal road users.

Keywords

Aboriginal People, Fatalities, Injuries, Passengers, Pedestrians

INTRODUCTION

Aboriginal people are over-represented in road crashes in Western Australia. While Aboriginal people make up only about 2 to 3% of the Western Australian population, they make up about 7% of hospital discharges that result from a road crash, highlighting an important road safety problem.

The Road Safety Council of the Northern Territory (1998) has analysed crashes involving Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory and found that Aboriginal people are over-represented on a per capita basis in road crash fatalities. These crashes tend to involve single vehicle roll over crashes characterised by the non-wearing of safety belts. Fatal road crashes were usually associated with alcohol use and were predominantly in rural or remote areas of the Northern Territory. Road users killed were mainly passengers, drivers, or pedestrians. Aboriginal pedestrian fatalities occurred when they were asleep on the road and were run over, or when they were struck after walking out onto a road into the path of a vehicle.

Fatalities involving passengers riding in the rear tray of a vehicle have also been identified as a problem in the Northern Territory and, as such, legislation has been introduced banning travel by passengers in the rear tray of vehicles without the addition of a roll over protection device. Garrow (1997) found that passengers travelling in the rear trays of vehicles made up 18% of fatalities in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Due to the success of the legislation in the Northern Territory, the Western Australian Department of Transport has introduced similar regulations in Western Australia.

Cercarelli (1994) has noted that there are several reasons to believe that the characteristics of crashes and injuries involving Aboriginal people are different from those involving other Australians. For example, about 73% of Aboriginal people live in rural areas and therefore use roads with higher speed limits, which are often unsealed. Aboriginal people also differ in lifestyle and culture and therefore differences in road user behaviour and responses to road safety education May become apparent. Furthermore, the vehicles driven May not be appropriate for the conditions for which they are used. It has been suggested that the poor condition of roads in remote areas can substantially contribute to vehicle deterioration and breakdown.

AIM

Given these issues, the aim of this paper is to examine road injuries involving Aboriginal people in Western Australia. This will be discussed in the context of the new road safety strategy that has been developed specifically to address road safety issues for Aboriginal road users (Road Safety Council of Western Australia, 2000). Much of the information in this paper will be drawn from the strategy document.

DATA

Data from the Injury Research Centre's Road Injury Database were used to determine differences in road crash and injury characteristics involving Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in Western Australia.

Age and gender of the casualties, location of crashes, crash type (whether the crash was a head on, a right angle crash, etc) and road user types were examined.

RESULTS

Trends

Figure 1 shows the trends in road injury hospitalisation rates in Western Australia for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people between 1971 and 1997. Over this time period, Aboriginal people had a higher rate of hospitalisation resulting from a road injury than non-Aboriginal people. The mean rate of hospitalisation for Aboriginal people during this time period was 719.1 per 100,000 population per year, compared with 363.4 per 100,000 population per year for non-Aboriginal people. Furthermore, for Aboriginal people, there was an overall increasing trend, while for non-Aboriginal people, there was an overall decreasing trend. The rates for Aboriginal people show more variability from year to year due to the small numbers.

Click on graph to view full image.
Figure 1. Trends in Road Injury Hospitalisation Rates in Western Australia for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal People, 1971 to 1997

Age

The death rate from road crashes for Aboriginal people is high for every age group (see Figure 2). Aboriginal people also have higher rates of hospitalisation from road crashes across all age groups compared with non-Aboriginal people. For those aged 45 to 64 the rate is more than four times that for non-Aboriginal people, and for those aged up to 14 years the rate is nearly three times as high. For those aged 65 and over the rate is double, although the numbers involved are small.

Figure 2. Age Groups of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal People Killed and Hospitalised in Western Australia

Gender

The death rate from road crashes for Aboriginal people is higher for males than females (as with the non-Aboriginal population) (see Figure 3). Both Aboriginal males and females are hospitalised from road injuries at more than twice the rate of non-Aboriginal people (the ratio is 2.7:1 for males and 2.8:1 for females).

Figure 3. Gender of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal People Killed and Hospitalised in Western Australia

Location

Figure 4 shows that most road crashes from which Aboriginal people are taken to hospital occur in rural areas, but the rate is also high in the metropolitan area.

Figure 4. Location of Crash of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal People Killed and Hospitalised in Western Australia

Regional Differences

There are also regional differences in road injury hospitalisations as shown on the map below. The map in Figure 5 shows that the rate of hospital admission for Aboriginal people was two to three times higher than the non-Aboriginal population in all parts of the state. It also shows that the highest rates for both groups were found in the statistical divisions furthest from the Perth metropolitan region.

Figure 5. Rates of Hospitalisation from Road Injury for Western Australia (per 100,000 population)

Crash Type

Table 1 presents the type of crash that Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people are involved in. About half (50%) of crashes involving Aboriginal people involved only a single vehicle ('Hit Animal', 'Hit Object' or 'Non-Collision'), compared with 41% of crashes involving non-Aboriginal people. It can also be seen in Table 1 that 29% of crashes involving Aboriginal people were 'Hit Pedestrian' crashes, compared with 11% of non-Aboriginal crashes. Other frequent crash types for Aboriginal people involved 'Hit Object' (25%, compared with 23% for non-Aboriginal people) and 'Non-Collision' (24%, compared with 17% for non-Aboriginal people), both of which are single vehicle crash types. For non-Aboriginal people, 18% of crashes were 'Right Angle' crashes and 8% were 'Indirect Right Angle' crashes, compared with 6% and 2%, respectively of crashes involving Aboriginal people.

Table 1 Crash type for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Hospitalisations in Western Australia, 1988 to 1996

Road User Type

Table 2 shows that about 19% of Aboriginal people hospitalised after a road crash are pedestrians, compared with 8% of non-Aboriginal people being pedestrians.

While 21% of non-Aboriginal people hospitalised were drivers and only 10% of Aboriginal people were drivers, 27% of Aboriginal people were passengers in vehicles, compared with 17% of non-Aboriginal people. Only 4% of Aboriginal people hospitalised were motorcyclists or motorcycle passengers, compared with 14% of non-Aboriginal people.

It is not clear why such a high proportion of cases are recorded as being of an unspecified road user type. However, these cases tend to be those admitted to rural hospitals, and are known to have been decreasing over time (Cercarelli, 1999).

Table 2 Hospitalisations by Road User Type for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal People in Western Australia, 1988 to 1996

Future PROGRAMS

Road crash data from Western Australia and the Northern Territory suggest that pedestrian safety is an important issue for Aboriginal people. The reasons for the large proportion of Aboriginal people being injured as pedestrians needs to be explored further. The role of alcohol in these crashes also needs to be examined. A further area for additional research is the high crash rates for Aboriginal people in the metropolitan area.

The new road safety strategy for Aboriginal road users addresses these issues. Other issues addressed by the strategy include low usage rates of restraints for both drivers and passengers, appropriateness of vehicles, road conditions in rural and remote areas, and improving trauma services in rural and remote areas. A community consultation process, currently underway, will look for comments and possible solutions to some of these issues.

References

Cercarelli, L.R. (1994). Road crashes involving Aboriginal people in Western Australia. Accident Analysis and Prevention, 26(3), 361-369.

Cercarelli, L.R. (1999). Road Crash Hospitalisations and Deaths in Western Australia Involving Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal People, 1988 to 1996. Road Accident Prevention Research Unit, RR87.

Garrow, S. (1997). Vehicle crash mortality in the Kimberley, 1990-1994. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 21(3), 341-342.

Road Safety Council of the Northern Territory. (1998). Northern Territory Road Crash Statistics 1997. Darwin: Road Safety Council of the Northern Territory.

Road Safety Council of Western Australia. (2000). Road Safety Directions for Aboriginal Road Users in Western Australia.

Biography

Dr Rina Cercarelli is a Research Fellow and Deputy Director of the Injury Research Centre of The University of Western Australia. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree with Honours in Psychology, and a PhD from The University of Western Australia, and has over 10 years of experience in road safety research. Her main research interests have been in the area of the role of human behaviour in road safety. Dr Cercarelli has worked in many areas of road safety including drink driving, examining the effectiveness of driver education and training, fatigue and long distance driving, and road safety problems involving Aboriginal people. She is the Chair of the Drink/Drug Driving Task Force, and is a member of the Aboriginal Road Users Task Force, Driver Training and Licensing Task Force, Fatigue Management Task Force, and the Motorcycle Reference Group, as well as President of the Injury Control Council of Western Australia.

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© Office of Road Safety 2001