On a day when RNZ reports another serious injury in Timaru, here's the safety story nobody's talking about: New Zealand's oldest workers are getting hurt far less than they used to.

In 2020, ACC recorded 28,491 serious or fatal injuries among people aged 90 and over. By 2024, that figure had dropped to 12,225. That's a 57% decline in just four years. (Source: Stats NZ / ACC, fatal-serious-injuries)

Something happened in 2022. The numbers fell off a cliff. Between 2021 and 2022, injuries in this age group plummeted from 29,499 to 12,597. They've stayed at roughly that level ever since.

This isn't a demographic story. New Zealand's population of people over 90 has been growing steadily, not shrinking. So either our oldest citizens suddenly became much safer, or the way we're counting changed dramatically.

The most likely explanation: COVID. Not the virus itself, but the response to it. When the pandemic hit, thousands of elderly New Zealanders withdrew from activities that had been putting them at risk. Fewer social outings. Fewer volunteer roles. Fewer trips that end in falls, car accidents, or workplace injuries.

But here's what makes this data genuinely strange: the decline has held. Even as New Zealand returned to normal life in 2023 and 2024, the injury rate among our oldest citizens hasn't bounced back. It's stayed at roughly half of what it was before COVID.

That suggests something more permanent has shifted. Maybe families became more cautious about letting elderly relatives drive or work. Maybe rest homes improved their safety protocols. Maybe people over 90 simply decided they'd had enough of taking risks.

Or maybe the data itself changed. ACC might have tightened its definitions. Injuries that used to count might not count anymore. Without transparency from ACC about methodology changes, we're left guessing.

What we know for certain: if you're over 90 and you get seriously hurt in New Zealand today, you're part of a much smaller group than you would have been five years ago. Whether that's because we've made life safer for our oldest citizens, or because we've just stopped counting the same way, is a question the numbers alone can't answer.

Either way, it's the biggest shift in elderly injury rates in two decades. And on a day when the news is full of individual tragedies, it's worth noting: sometimes, quietly, things do get better.