Road trains consist of a prime mover with two or more trailers attached, and are used extensively by the agricultural and mining industries in the rural and remote regions of the state. For the five year period 1988-1992, 91 crashes involving road trains were identified in the Road Injury Database of the Road Accident Prevention Research Unit, Department of Public Health, the University of Western Australia. This database consists of linked data from police crash records, hospital admission records, ambulance records and death registry records. Police crash report forms were then examined to obtain more details of each crash. The crash involvement rate per 100 million vehicle kilometres is lower outside of Perth, but the rate increases with the number of trailers in tow. The rate for three trailer road trains is over twice that for two trailer trains. About one quarter of road train crashes involved a fatality, compared with under 10% for semitrailers. Opposite direction and overtaking crashes had a high proportion of fatalities, in which the occupants of the other vehicle were at much greater risk than the road train occupants. The risk of injury to road train occupants is in crashes associated with rollovers, which occurred in 13 of 33 single vehicle crashes. About 4% of road train drivers died in the 91 casualty crashes, twice the rate for car drivers in casualty crashes. About 20% of road train crashes were associated with fatigue, 80% of these were single vehicle crashes. More detailed investigations are underway to define the mechanisms of crash and injury causation involved in the high-risk situations described above.