Transport Safety
Chapter 10
This chapter provides data on Australian safety for road, aviation, rail and maritime transport types. This includes data relating to crashes, fatalities, injuries and their rates of occurrence, as well as how this can differ for different demographics, states and territories (subject to data availability).
- In 2022, 1,180 people died in road crashes in Australia, down from 1 737 in 2001.
- 34 aviation fatalities occurred in Australia in 2022.
- Road crashes caused 40 000 people in Australia to be with hospitalized injuries in 2021 up from 27 000 in 2001.
- On Australia’s railways, 13 people died and 47 were seriously injured in 2022 (excludes suspected suicide).
Figure 1 Number of fatal crashes, by transport mode
This graph shows the number of fatal crashes over time, by transport mode (with road crashes on the left axis and marine and aviation crashes on the right axis). Fatal road crashes (the number of crashes or accidents which resulted in at least one death) have been slowly trending downwards between 2010 and 2022, falling from 1 229 to 1 105, with an average of 1 112 over this period. There were 33 fatal aviation crashes in 2013 and they have remained between 14 and 23 since 2016. Marine fatal crashes have remained between 2 and 6 from 2010 to 2022.