The number of serious injuries caused by road accidents in Victoria has not budged for a decade despite the road toll falling 26 per cent with road safety authorities admitting they are struggling to build safe cycling infrastructure quick enough to meet surging demand.
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A high number of injury claims and faster processing has meant a record 22,012 injury claims to the Transport Accident Commission in 2013/14.
The senior manager of road safety at the Transport Accident Commission, Samantha Cockfield, said Victoria was doing well on reducing fatalities but faced a challenge with vulnerable road users such as cyclists and motorcyclists.
"We have been doing very well concentrating on the very serious end, particularly fatalities with road side barriers, more roundabouts, safer cars and speed limits preventing the very serious end of it," she said.
"What we have got though is upward pressure affecting day to day injuries... the really emerging group for us right now are cyclists and they are the ones that are growing faster than we can keep up with creating separated bike lanes," she said.
In the five years to March 2014, the TAC recorded 1569 cycling accidents requiring hospitalisation.
Ms Cockfield said the other factors preventing a reduction in road injuries were an aging population suffering more severe injuries, and more vehicles on the road.
"So in a crash, an 18-year-old may go to the hospital for a check-up and may go home with pain medication for cracked ribs.. if a 70-year-old is involved in the same crash with cracked ribs they are probably going to be hospitalised for monitoring," Ms Cockfield said.
Associate Professor Michael Fitzharris from the Monash University Accident Research Centre said safer cars were having a dramatic impact on reducing fatalities.
He said a driver of a car with side air bags had a one third better chance of surviving a side impact crash than a car without them and side curtain airbags reduced the risk of serious head injuries by more than two-thirds.
"It is unequivocal in terms of the benefits of side curtain airbags," he said.
"The message is very clear, you buy a five-star car with a side curtain airbag front and rear and I would expect that, in combination with electronic stability control, leads to very significant reductions in fatality risk and particularly serious head injury risk."
The record number of TAC injury claims comes as the state government considers tailoring bills to individual drivers.
The Department of Treasury and Finance and TAC are considering how to better apportion crash risk in premiums.
Currently TAC charges are based on the type/use of the vehicle and the postcode 'risk zone' where the registered vehicle is kept.
A 2013 report by the Essential Services Commission said there should be "consideration of additional or amended geographic zones, and/or vehicle classes; and an assessment of options for introducing driver characteristics into the calculation of TAC premiums".
The government supported this recommendation and said: "this will be introduced in a staged manner".
A government spokesman told The Age, "the Government has indicated that well before any change to TAC premiums are made, risk data needs to be collected and published to inform the Victorian community of the nature of risk on our roads".
