[russellw]

I did do some analysis of the road statistics ten years back - it's probably in the Tech portal somewhere still but basically that article looked at the metrics rather than the raw numbers. To summarise:
- fatalities per 100M kilometres travelled had dropped from 4.43 in 1970 to 0.51 in 2013 with the biggest decrease drop being the decade air bags became widely available.
- fatalities per 100k registered vehicles had also dropped from 22.95 in 1925 to 1.18 in 2000 and to 0.70 in 2013.
- fatalities per 100k population dropped from 24.17 in 1979 to 5.17 in 2013 although it had peaked at over 30 in the late 1960's.

However, and this is the point I want to make, the figures for serious injuries showed a different trend:
- In 1989, the National serious injury rate was 254.9 per 100k of population (although the States varied substantially) which was 15.3 injuries for every death.
- that raw rate declined up until 2000 when it was 151.44 per 100k of population but it was still 15.9 injuries per death.
- by 2013 that rate was back up to 163.04 but more significantly it was now 28.2 injuries per death.
- In the year 2000 (the lowest point for this data) 26,661 people were seriously injured in road accidents but in 2013 this number had climbed to 37,638 so while 438 less people have been killed in 2013 compared to 2000 (a 25.2% decrease), 10,977 more people have been seriously injured for a 41.2% increase.

I expect if I update this data for the decade since (might be an Xmas break project), I'd find the trends had continued with the overall fatality rate dropping but the serious injury rate increasing.