Abstract text (incl. references and figure legends)
Introduction
Road trauma from all forms of transport is a significant contributor to the burden of injury. Road to Zero is the NZ Transport Agencies strategy to reduce deaths and serious injury on roads. However, there are significant gaps in data to inform where road trauma is occurring, and who is being injured. Many of the gaps concern motorcycling, cycling and pedestrian injuries. The SORTED study aims to address these some of these gaps.
Materials and methods
Nine health and transport agencies collaborated using six different datasets which spanned ambulance, Emergency Department, hospital admissions, trauma registry, accident insurance claims, and police investigations. Individuals injured were linked across the datasets, and additional information included such as deprivation and rurality, based on where the person lives. Ambulance and police data was used to undertake geospatial mapping of where the injury occurred.
Results
44,000 (880/100,000) people are injured on New Zealand roads each year. Severity of injury was categorised into minor (73%), moderate (24%), serious (2%) and deaths (1%). Police investigations of hospitalised road trauma was low for motorcyclists (38%) and cyclists (19%). People who had serious injuries entered into the trauma registry accounted for only 2% of the total caseload, but 52% of the direct cost to health services.
Conclusion
Initiatives to achieve Road to Zero require information which is accurate and comprehensive, and studies such as SORTED which link individuals across health and transport datasets can make a useful contribution and address some of the current gaps in data. Collaborations such as these achieve more than any single agency can achieve on its own.
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