As a coroner orders a joint inquest into four youth motocross fatalities (as reported by RNZ, February 2026), another set of deaths — less newsworthy, less sudden, but no less real — has been quietly disappearing from the data.

In 2021, ACC recorded 29,499 fatal and serious injuries among workers aged 90 and over. Three years later, that figure stands at 12,225 (Source: Stats NZ / ACC, fatal-serious-injuries). That's a 59% drop. The steepest decline happened between 2021 and 2022, when the number fell to 12,597 — a crash of 57% in twelve months.

Here's the timeline that tells the story. From 2005 to 2021, injuries in this age group climbed steadily. In 2020, ACC recorded 28,491 cases. A year later, that number peaked at 29,499. Then something changed.

The most obvious explanation: COVID-19. Lockdowns in 2021 and 2022 kept older New Zealanders home. Those still working — mostly in retail, caregiving, or farm work — either stopped, or their workplaces finally made safety changes they'd been putting off for years.

But the number hasn't bounced back. In 2023, it held at 12,672. In 2024, it dipped again to 12,225. That's not a lockdown blip. That's a structural shift.

What's driving it? Three possibilities. First, New Zealand's 90+ workforce is shrinking as retirement finally catches up with the generation that never stopped working. Second, the most dangerous jobs — farms, factories, construction sites — are finally ageing out of this cohort. Third, families and employers are no longer letting 90-year-olds do the physically risky work they once did.

The data doesn't tell us which injuries disappeared. It doesn't break down whether these were falls, vehicle accidents, or machinery injuries. But it does tell us this: whatever was causing nearly 30,000 ACC claims among 90+ workers in 2021 is now causing fewer than half that many.

Youth deaths make headlines because they feel preventable, because we imagine a future stolen. The quiet reduction in workplace injuries among our oldest workers doesn't get the same attention. But every one of those 17,000-plus fewer claims represents a 90-year-old who didn't fall off a ladder, didn't get crushed by machinery, didn't die on the job.

The coroner's inquest into motocross deaths will ask hard questions about risk, supervision, and whether young lives could have been saved. The ACC data for 90+ workers suggests a quieter question: what changed in 2022 that made New Zealand's most vulnerable workers suddenly so much safer?