A leading trauma surgeon has called for road crash data to be made as freely available as information on COVID-19 cases.

Members of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons have told an inquiry a lack of access to publicly available road trauma data was hindering efforts to improve safety.

The college’s trauma committee chair Dr John Crozier told the parliamentary committee that, in some instances, the most recent data on the number of hospitalisations from road crashes were more than two-years-old.

“Anyone in the world who has internet access can see how we are dealing with COVID-19 and how many hospital and ICU beds are occupied,” he said.