Crashes involving road users who have recently arrived in South Australia

Abstract

There have only been a limited number of previous road safety studies of recent arrivals (tourists and migrants) in Australia. The present report examined crashes in South Australia in which a road user (car driver, motorcycle rider, bicycle rider or pedestrian) who had recently arrived in Australia (i.e. country of birth was other than Australia and had been in Australia for one year or less) was injured and admitted to hospital. Records from the Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH) in South Australia for 56 injured recently arrived road users from May 2014 to October 2017 were linked with police-reported crash data and results of forensic blood tests for alcohol and drugs. They comprised 2.7% of the total 2,037 crash-involved road users who were admitted to the RAH during this period, which indicates that they constitute only a small part of the road trauma in South Australia. Characteristics of the sample of recently arrived road users and their crashes were examined and comparisons made to 1,837 road users who were either born in Australia or had been in Australia for more than one year and who were admitted to the RAH over the same period. Recent arrivals were younger and more likely to be at-fault for their crashes. They did not differ from longer-term Australian road users in the likelihood of testing positive for alcohol and were less likely to test positive for a proscribed drug. Some of their crashes may have been due to unfamiliarity or confusion with either the road environment or the road rules in South Australia. Also, recently arrived car drivers were more likely to crash in rural areas and areas with high speed limits, to be involved in departed lane/off path type crashes, to experience longer delays in the arrival of medical care to the scene of their crashes, and to have been more severely injured. This report provided an important update on the road safety of a group of road users who have been largely overlooked by recent research. Countermeasures to improve their safety are discussed with reference to these findings.