Trends in severe pedestrian injuries among older people in NSW

Pedestrian injuries from motor vehicle collisions have a high morbidity, mortality, and cost. Older people are consistently overrepresented within this population. While recent research has reported decreasing pedestrian injury cases, the decline in the rate of older pedestrians is not as sharp as it is for children. Examining trends of older pedestrian severe injuries is necessary and revealing given the relatively high severity and injury burden of older people. Pedestrian injury cases were obtained from the Traffic Accident Database System (TADS; NSW Roads and Traffic Authority), the NSW Admitted Patients Data Collection (APDC; NSW Health Department), and the Australian Bureau of Statistics mortality data file. All NSW residents aged 65 years or older and hospitalised or fatally injured in a pedestrian motor vehicle collision between years 1999- 2007 were included. There was a significant reduction in incident cases of reported older pedestrian injuries from 1999 through 2007. However, there was no meaningful reduction in mortality among older persons, in contrast to a significant reduction among children and adults. There is a decreasing trend in older pedestrian injuries in NSW, however, this trend is not apparent for indicators of more severe injuries. The injury burden of pedestrian injuries of older people is being underestimated. An examination of additional indicators of burden of injury will help elucidate the true extent of this public health problem.