100 Hiking Safety Statistics for 2026

New Zealand tramping injury claims and costs

ACC identifies these records through the accident-sport label tramping. The agency explicitly states that it cannot locate accidents at the level of individual tracks or walks. New claims are counted by lodgement year, whereas active claims received a payment during the relevant period and can relate to earlier injuries. Active costs exclude GST and acute public-hospital payments. The administrative coverage also excludes accredited-employer claims. These boundaries matter when interpreting either annual changes or the size of the recorded workload.

• New Zealand 2020: 6,121 new accepted tramping claims. (ACC, Nov 2025)
• New Zealand 2020: 6,946 active accepted tramping claims. (ACC, Nov 2025)
• New Zealand 2020: NZ$5,460,804 active tramping claim costs, excluding GST. (ACC, Nov 2025)

Where New Zealand claims were recorded

ACC's regional breakdown describes the accident region, not where a claimant lives or receives treatment. The series can help locate recorded claim activity, but it does not identify which track was involved. Differences between regions cannot be interpreted as a risk ranking without comparable measures of walking exposure. The following observations all use the same complete lodgement year and the same accepted tramping-claim definition; they are not mixed with the territorial-authority breakdown elsewhere in the source.

• New Zealand, Northland accident region: 259 new tramping claims lodged in 2024. (ACC, Nov 2025)
• New Zealand, Auckland accident region: 1,464 new tramping claims lodged in 2024. (ACC, Nov 2025)
• New Zealand, Waikato accident region: 825 new tramping claims lodged in 2024. (ACC, Nov 2025)

Swiss mountain-hiking fatalities over time

SAC's historical table separates mountain hiking from other mountain sports. This section uses that mountain-hiking column throughout and reports fatal accident victims within the source's Swiss rescue-statistics territory. The figures are a historical series instead of an estimate of current individual risk. Changes in participation, exposure, weather and reporting would require additional evidence before explaining a difference between years. No such explanation is assumed here, and no percentage of all hikers is calculated from these counts.

• Swiss mountain-hiking accident fatalities in 2012: 32 people. (SAC, Mar 2026)
• Swiss mountain-hiking accident fatalities in 2013: 39 people. (SAC, Mar 2026)

Swiss mountain-hiking emergency causes

SAC's cause chart counts people involved in mountain-hiking emergencies. It is broader than a fatality series and includes situations where someone was blocked or exhausted. The published percentage shares use people involved as their denominator, not all hikers in Switzerland. They are reproduced as source-reported shares instead of recomputed from rounded chart labels. The latest fall and blocked-or-exhausted counts are given in the takeaways; the remaining observations preserve the source's cause categories and comparison years.

• Swiss mountain-hiking emergencies in 2025, fall share: 39% of people involved. (SAC, Mar 2026)
• Swiss mountain-hiking emergencies in 2025, blocked or exhausted share: 35% of people involved. (SAC, Mar 2026)
• Swiss mountain-hiking emergencies in 2025, illness: 285 people. (SAC, Mar 2026)

Walking rescue operations and assistance in the Polish Tatras

TOPR's annual registers distinguish operations, people and forms of assistance. This section selects the walking column within the Polish Tatras blocks, excluding Slovakia, other regions and other mountain sports. The records are historical and are not presented as current-year estimates. Helicopter subsets remain within their parent operational categories, and different assistance categories can overlap for the same person. The overall walking-person, serious-outcome and helicopter-person observations are given once in the takeaways.

• Polish Tatras, 2022: 794 walking rescue operations. (TOPR, Jan 2023)
• Polish Tatras, 2022: 221 walking rescue operations involving a helicopter. (TOPR, Jan 2023)
• Polish Tatras, 2022: 17 fatal outcomes among rescued walking participants. (TOPR, Jan 2023)
• TOPR's 2022 Polish Tatras walking records: no assistance provided for 48 people. (TOPR, Jan 2023)

Full Source List

ACC tramping injury claims, OIA GOV-043715, ACC; published 2025-11-07. Original producer.

SAC Bergnotfallstatistik 2025, SAC; published 2026-03-27. Original producer. TOPR 2022 mountain rescue operations, Tatrzańskie Ochotnicze Pogotowie Ratunkowe (TOPR); report generated 2023-01-09. Original producer. TOPR 2022 people rescued, Tatrzańskie Ochotnicze Pogotowie Ratunkowe (TOPR); report generated 2023-01-09. Original producer. SAC publication announcement, confirms the publication date of the Swiss report.

Methodology and sources

Every figure on this page comes from the organisation that produced it: regulators, statistics offices, public bodies, research institutes, and companies reporting their own data or surveys. Each one links to the original report or dataset and carries its release date. Survey results keep their population and fieldwork period, and financial figures keep the measure the producer used. Figures from different producers are not added together or ranked against each other. The page is reviewed monthly and updated when a producer releases newer data.

• ACC · Nov 2025
• SAC · Mar 2026
• TOPR · Jan 2023
• TOPR · Jan 2023