chch.live the crash record

The city’s crash record.

44,833 crashes on the public record since 2006, 16,197 of them hurt somebody.

256 people killed3,330 seriously hurt, since 2006, on the city’s public roads

Where it happens

The map needs JavaScript, the counts below still stand.

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Each dot is one crash in the record, coloured by the worst injury in it. Click a dot for what the Crash Analysis System (CAS) knows, the roads, who was involved, what the day was like, and how often that corner appears.

Browse the record without the map

The browsable record needs JavaScript, the same answer is public JSON at api.chch.live/crash-points.

How often

2025 saw 689 injury crashes, about 36% below the 2007 peak of 1,069.

Crashes that hurt somebody, a year taller is worse, a column opens its year

Crashes in which at least one person was hurt. 2026 is still being filed and is left off, 465 injury crashes are already on record for it.

The whole record, by severity 44,833 crashes

fatal 234 256 people killed
serious 3,065 3,330 people seriously hurt
minor 12,898 16,432 minor injuries
damage only 28,636 nobody hurt: see the note below

Severity is the worst injury in the crash; the counts beside each row are people. Reported damage-only crashes rise and fall with how willing people are to fill in a form, the record holds them, the trend lines above do not count them.

By the light injury crashes

Bright sun 6,882
Overcast 4,553
Dark 4,008
Twilight 743
Unknown 11

Where it keeps happening

The corners and roads the record names most, since 2016. A corner needs both streets named to appear in the first list; a mid-block crash names only its road.

16,108 of the 16,197 injury crashes on record name a corner, two roads in the report; the other 89 name only their road.

A row opens the spot on the address page, what stands there now, and everything else the record holds for it.

Every road pairing, ranked and paged: the pairings the record keeps: one page per crossing.

Who it happens to

On foot, on a bike, on a motorbike, the road users with no shell around them. Each tile opens the map filtered to that mode.

"Involving" counts the crash, not the blame, a bicycle in a crash is a bicycle in a crash whoever caused it, and one crash can carry several of these. A tile opens the map filtered to it. CAS does not publish causes at all.

The rest of the record

What the record also says, where inside the city crashes land, and the limits on the roads they happened on.

By suburb since 2016

By the speed limit injury crashes, and the share that killed

10 km/h 39 1 killed
20 km/h 29 1 killed
30 km/h 273 2 killed · 0.7 per 100
40 km/h 56 3 killed
50 km/h 11,897 118 killed · 1.0 per 100
60 km/h 1,727 51 killed · 3.0 per 100
70 km/h 596 17 killed · 2.9 per 100
80 km/h 790 28 killed · 3.5 per 100
100 km/h 732 31 killed · 4.2 per 100
110 km/h 3

The same rows, the other way, for every hundred crashes at the limit, how many killed somebody. The limit is the road’s own, not the speed the driver chose.

30 km/h 0.7 2 of 273 killed
50 km/h 1.0 118 of 11,897 killed
60 km/h 3.0 51 of 1,727 killed
70 km/h 2.9 17 of 596 killed
80 km/h 3.5 28 of 790 killed
100 km/h 4.2 31 of 732 killed

The count bar is where the crashes are; the rate is where the harm is. A crash on a 100 km/h road kills somebody about 4.3× as often as one on a 50 km/h street, 31 killed in 732 crashes against 118 in 11,897 crashes.

The day of it

What CAS records about each crash beyond the toll, the thing it struck, the weather it happened in, what held the crossing and the rest of the fleet on the road.

What they hit injury crashes

a parked vehicle 1,382
a post or pole 915
a fence 751
a tree 573
a traffic sign 312
a kerb 269
a traffic island 246
a bank or cliff face 229

A crash can hit several things, most hit nothing at all.

The weather it happened in injury crashes

fine 13,960
light rain 1,610
heavy rain 389
mist or fog 196
snow 14
hail or sleet 3

A second condition rode some of them, strong wind on 186, frost on 177.

How the crossing was controlled injury crashes

no marked control 4,400
not recorded 4,140
traffic signals 3,575
a give way 2,923
a stop sign 1,134
pedestrian signals 14
a school patrol 9
a pointsman 2

The control CAS recorded at the spot: what held the traffic, not which rule was broken.

The vehicles on the day injury crashes

cars & station wagons 13,478
SUVs 2,210
vans & utes 2,125
taxis 168
unrecorded vehicles 58
other vehicles 50
trains 5
school buses 5

The rest of the fleet, the bikes, motorbikes and trucks are counted with the road users above.

The way the roads ran: 14,426 on a two-way road, 1,565 on a one-way street, 204 on off the road. The lanes under them: 11,621 on 2 lanes, 1,865 on 4 lanes, 1,094 on 3 lanes, 589 on 6 lanes, 545 on 1 lanes, 271 on 5 lanes, 20 on 8 lanes, 9 on 7 lanes. 876 were on a hill road. 95 left the sealed road. The uncommon spots: 159 on a bridge, 77 a motorway ramp, 39 a rail crossing, 25 a speed hump, 22 an overpass, 18 an underpass, 5 tram lines, 4 tunnel. The way the unit travelled: heading south in 2,072, heading north in 2,066, heading west in 1,827, heading east in 1,775. The street lights were on for 3,998, off for 3,824 and absent for 825. Roadworks marked 13, a temporary speed limit 239, an advisory speed 228.

From NZTA’s Crash Analysis System, the police-reported record, shared under CC BY 4.0, refreshed here 6 October 2026. CAS receives a crash weeks after it happens, once the police report is filed, so the most recent months are always incomplete. The record carries no date finer than the year, no causes and no blame, and a pin is where the report put the crash, a corner’s cluster can sit a few metres off the kerb. Damage-only reporting especially depends on people choosing to file, so it undercounts more than the harm figures do.

Questions, answered briefly

How many crashes are on Christchurch’s record?

44,833 police-reported crashes since 2006, 256 people killed, 3,330 seriously hurt. From NZTA’s Crash Analysis System.

What was Christchurch’s worst crash year on record?

2007, 1,069 crashes recorded, 13 people killed. Each year has its own page.

Are all Christchurch crashes in this record?

No, the record counts crashes a police officer wrote up. Damage-only and minor bumps are underreported everywhere; the killed and seriously-hurt numbers are the ones that hold.