Australian Road Deaths Database, fatalities
liveThe Australian Road Deaths Database lists each road crash death reported by police to the state and territory road safety authorities since January 1989. Each row is one person killed, with the crash date and time, state, crash type, the vehicles involved, the speed limit, the road user, gender and age, and for recent years the remoteness area, SA4, council area and road type.
Also called: Australian Road Deaths Database (ARDD), BITRE road deaths, Australian road toll statistics, National road fatality data.
What is in it
Column names are made snake_case and the publisher's original header is kept beside each one. Blank cells are null. Nothing is added, removed, ranked or summarised.
| Field | Type | Publisher's header | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| crash_id | string | Crash ID | The publisher's crash identifier. Every person killed in one crash shares it. |
| state | string | State | NSW, VIC, QLD, SA, WA, TAS, NT or ACT. |
| month | integer | Month | |
| year | integer | Year | |
| day_of_week | string | Dayweek | |
| time | string | Time | Time of the crash as HH:MM:SS. |
| crash_type | string | Crash Type | Single or Multiple vehicle, or Unknown. |
| bus_involvement | boolean | Bus Involvement | |
| heavy_rigid_truck_involvement | boolean | Heavy Rigid Truck Involvement | |
| articulated_truck_involvement | boolean | Articulated Truck Involvement | |
| speed_limit | integer | Speed Limit | Posted speed limit in km/h. The publisher's -9 for unknown is null here. |
| road_user | string | Road User | Driver, Passenger, Pedestrian, Motorcycle rider, Motorcycle pillion passenger, Pedal cyclist or Unknown. |
| gender | string | Gender | |
| age | integer | Age | Age in years. The publisher's -9 for unknown is null here. |
| national_remoteness_areas_2021 | string | National Remoteness Areas 2021 | |
| sa4_name_2021 | string | SA4 Name 2021 | |
| national_lga_name_2021 | string | National LGA Name 2021 | Council area on the 2021 boundaries. |
| national_road_type | string | National Road Type | |
| christmas_period | boolean | Christmas Period | |
| easter_period | boolean | Easter Period |
schema.json has the same list as a Frictionless Table Schema.
A sample record
The first row of the latest version, as it appears in data.json.
GET https://publicdata.au/d/au-road-deaths/latest/data.json
{
"crash_id": "1199208270377",
"state": "NSW",
"month": 8,
"year": 1992,
"day_of_week": "Thursday",
"time": "14:35:00",
"crash_type": "Single",
"bus_involvement": false,
"heavy_rigid_truck_involvement": null,
"articulated_truck_involvement": false,
"speed_limit": 100,
"road_user": "Driver",
"gender": "Male",
"age": 34,
"national_remoteness_areas_2021": "Unknown",
"sa4_name_2021": "Unknown",
"national_lga_name_2021": "Unknown",
"national_road_type": "Unknown",
"christmas_period": false,
"easter_period": false
}
Smaller files
The same rows split by a field, one JSON file each. Each file carries the same provenance header.
By state (8 files)
by/state/index.json lists every file with its row count.
By year (38 files)
by/year/index.json lists every file with its row count.
What changed
One version for every release the publisher has made since this site started following the dataset. The date is the day the file changed on the portal.
- 2026-08-07 58,837 rows20 fieldsxlsx245947df7e2e
versions.json · changes.json · history.tar.zst (859 KB, every version's Parquet and manifest)
Questions
How do I download Australian Road Deaths Database as a CSV file?
Open https://publicdata.au/d/au-road-deaths/latest/data.csv. It redirects to the newest dated version, which is https://publicdata.au/d/au-road-deaths/v/2026-08-07/data.csv today. The same path serves Parquet, JSON, Excel, SQLite, NDJSON, Arrow. A dated URL never changes, so use it when the file must stay the same.
Can I open Australian Road Deaths Database in Excel?
Yes. https://publicdata.au/d/au-road-deaths/v/2026-08-07/data.xlsx is a workbook with the 58,837 rows on a records sheet, the field list on a second sheet and the provenance on a third. The CSV also opens in Excel. https://publicdata.au/d/au-road-deaths/v/2026-08-07/data.csv.gz is the CSV at about a tenth of the size.
What years does Australian Road Deaths Database cover?
The current version covers 1989. Each release from BITRE becomes a new dated version here, and earlier versions stay online.
How often is Australian Road Deaths Database updated?
BITRE releases it monthly. This site checks the portal every week and adds a dated version when the file changes.
Can I use Australian Road Deaths Database commercially?
Yes. CC BY 4.0 allows commercial use, redistribution and derived works as long as the attribution is kept. The attribution string is in this page's side column and inside every file.
Is this the official source for Australian Road Deaths Database?
No. The publisher is Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics, and its page is https://www.infrastructure.gov.au/copyright. This site republishes the publisher's file without changing its content. The original sits beside every version as source.xlsx with its SHA-256, so the two can be compared.
How do I get only the rows for one state?
Every version has one JSON file per value of state, 8 files in the current version, listed with row counts at https://publicdata.au/d/au-road-deaths/v/2026-08-07/by/state/index.json. For example https://publicdata.au/d/au-road-deaths/v/2026-08-07/by/state/nsw.json holds the 17,841 rows where state is NSW.
Does this include the road toll for the current year?
Yes. The database is updated monthly and runs to the latest month the publisher has released. Deaths from recent months are preliminary and the publisher revises them, so a later version can change a recent count.
Why do some crashes appear on more than one row?
Each row is one person killed. A crash that killed three people appears as three rows with the same crash_id. Count distinct crash_id values to count fatal crashes.
Why do many rows say Unknown for remoteness area, council area and road type?
The publisher codes remoteness area, SA4, council area and road type only for recent years. Earlier rows carry Unknown in those columns, which is the publisher's own value and is kept as published.
What this site did to the data. Cells were typed, headers were renamed and the encoding was made UTF-8. Rows were left alone. The publisher's file sits beside every version as source.xlsx so the change can be checked.