Databases for Road Traffic Injury Surveillance in New South Wales

Road traffic injuries are a significant public health problem around the world. Efforts to prevent road traffic injuries are likely to benefit from the collection of consistent and comparable injury information. This study evaluated data item availability across different road traffic injury surveillance data collections in New South Wales in relation to the World Health Organization's recommended core minimum, optimal and supplementary data sets that outline the necessary data items for injury surveillance. The data collections reviewed are suitable for road traffic injury surveillance in different contexts. However, none of the data collections examined sufficiently categorized two common data items required in road safety research: occupant protection devices and injury outcomes. Further improvement of current routine road traffic crash data collections is warranted to build the required data infrastructure to overcome challenges for etiologically based analyses.