Pedal cycle injuries in NSW: A comparison of data sources

Road & Transport Research, Dec 2003 by Voukelatos, Alex, Rissel, Chris, Campbell, Fiona

Regardless of the level of data filtering, children aged 5-14 years represent a disproportionately high proportion of pedal cycle injuries.

In previous years the RTA only reported serious injuries, defined as hospital stays of 2 days of more. Although not used for the year 2000 report, this additional filter is included as an illustration of what effect it has on hospital injury data (Table 5). The filter length of hospital stay of 2 days or more captures almost all road traffic injuries to motor vehicle occupants. Once again when looking at road traffic pedal cyclist injuries the situation changes according to whether the additional pedal cycle injury code is included or not. When the code is not included the 2day hospital stay filter still captures all the pedal cyclist injuries. However, when the additional injury code is included the 2-day hospital stay filter captures only 42% of cases.

DISCUSSION

In the light of the different data collection methods used and the different patterns of results, few conclusive remarks can be made. It is clear that in motor vehicle and pedal cycle accident-related injuries requiring hospitalisation (Table2) the majority of cases involve a motor vehicle accident. The vast majority of road traffic-related injuries, as reported by the RTA, occur in motor vehicle occupants (Table 1). However, when looking at hospital data the situation is not so clear. The number of injuries to motor vehicle occupants reported by hospitals is only half that reported by the RTA. For pedal cyclist injuries the results are less clear. If only the cases that strictly occur in a collision between a motor vehicle and a pedal cycle are included, then, from Table 3, we see that hospitals report only one third of the pedal cyclist injuries reported by the RTA.

However, the issue of under-reporting pedal cyclist injuries is real and acknowledged by the RTA. If we include, as argued earlier, all pedal cyclist injuries then a different profile emerges. Hospital data report twice as many pedal cycle injuries compared with RTA data. Clearly, not all pedal cyclist injuries captured in the E826.1 code involve interaction with a motor vehicle, with a about half of pedal cycle injuries occurring in children aged 14 and under who will be less commonly riding on the road (Table 3).

A similar story emerges when we restrict our hospitalised injury cases to those occurring because of road traffic accidents (Table 4). Hospital data presents only one third of the injuries occurring to motor vehicle occupants when compared to RTA data. Again, hospital data report twice as many pedal cycle injuries compared with RTA data.

In previous years the RTA has reported only 'serious' road traffic accident-related injuries, defined as injuries requiring a hospital stay of 2 days or more. When this additional filter is applied to the data in Table 4 a very interesting pattern emerges (table 5). The hospital stay filter has little effect the number of injuries to motor vehicle occupants, and does not change at all the number of pedal cyclist injuries when excluding the extra pedal cycle injury code. However, by including the code we note that the hospital length of stay filter excludes about 58% of cases.