The Australian government aims to reduce road deaths by 50 per cent by 2030, but the numbers are going up, not down – 1,247 people died in the 12 months to October 31 and more than 100 were hospitalised every day.
The Federal Government gives states and territories $10billion in road funding each year, but many organisations and academics say it should be doing more to tackle the death toll using hard data.
Every state and territory government collects vital information on road deaths and serious injury, but they don’t share this data with each other, the federal government, independent experts or the public.
The Australian Automobile Association (AAA) says this data could save lives and it ‘can be done relatively quickly – governments must not kick the can down the road’.
But not one federal Labor politician has signed up to AAA’s campaign to have this data shared, with the association offering an online service where people can ‘find out if your local MP is focused on saving lives or winning votes’.
‘Despite billions spent each year on our roads, deaths are increasing and the data can tell us what is going wrong,’ AAA managing director Michael Bradley said, welcoming the Australian Medical Association’s backing for the campaign.
‘Doctors and first responders serve on the front lines of the nation’s road safety crisis. They deal with the tragic human outcomes of road trauma.
‘Politicians should listen to doctors and put safety ahead of secrecy. Using data to save lives is not a political issue. It is simple common sense.’
After falling during lockdown, the number of road crash deaths have been rising again across the world as countries emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Though there are theories that being locked down for so long made people less patient with other drivers and more likely to speed and take other risks, the reality is much simpler.
More cars on the road and more kilometres being driven means more crashes, more deaths and more serious injuries.
The crashes, lives lost and lives ruined throughout the past 12 months in Australia have been relentless.
In June, 10 people died in Australia’s worst road crash in decades when a bus carrying people home from a wedding reception rolled in the NSW Hunter Valley.
In December, a P-plate driver who killed five teenage school friends when he crashed a speeding ute in 2022 was jailed for at least seven years.
The sentence given to Tyrell Edwards, 20, was called ‘absolutely disgusting’ by victims’ relatives outside Campbelltown District Court in south-western Sydney.
In November, five members of two young families were killed when an SUV ploughed through a packed pub beer garden in Daylesford, Victoria.
The driver, William Herbert Swale, allegedly ignored nine alarms notifying him his blood glucose was low in the hour before the crash.
Melbourne Magistrates’ Court also heard that Swale had previously received 32 penalty notices, largely for excessive speed.
Academic and road safety expert Professor Raphael Grzebieta was astonished that Swale was still allowed to drive.
‘We’ve got some real fundamental problems in terms of how to control people who are recalcitrant, habitual, recidivist speedsters, drinkers and drug users who put our general population at risk,’ he told Daily Mail Australia.
‘When it comes to road safety, for some reason, we seem to exempt people with allowing them to do this.
‘How many cases have I heard where someone was a recidivist alcoholic and (the authorities) didn’t stop them from driving.
‘They were driving and they wind up killing someone as a result of that. These criminal aspects of the law need to be tightened up a lot more.’
Mark Stevenson, a Professor of Urban Transport and Public Health at the University of Melbourne said the problem of speeding has not changed much from before, during or after the pandemic.
‘We have got some unique data where we’ve followed thousands of drivers, pre-Covid and post-Covid, and in that data we show that the speeding and other elements haven’t changed significantly at all over that period,’ he said.
‘There’s this perception that Covid changed how people drive. But from what we’re seeing in that data that doesn’t hold up as a hypothesis.’
Speeding, fatigue, drink driving and drug driving remain leading contributors to these tragedies – all behaviours within drivers and riders’ control,’ a Transport for NSW spokesperson said.
Prof Grzebieta said for suburban streets, speed limits should be set to a maximum of 40km/h.
‘At the moment, the default is 50. In the Northern Territory it’s a crazy 60,’ he said.
‘It’s just too high and it should be set to 40km/h, because at night when you’re driving your car in a built-up area, you have to set it to low beam.
‘The major feeder roads have sufficient lighting, but in residential streets the lighting’s not so good and you won’t see a pedestrian with low beam.’
A pedestrian’s chances of surviving being hit are 10 times higher if the speed limit was reduced from 50 to 40, he said.
‘If you hit someone at 50km/h (there’s) a 60 per cent chance that they will wind up getting killed,’ Prof Grzebieta said.
Prof Grzebieta said any plans to have speed limits reduced nationally would lead to a ‘huge pushback from WA, from the Northern Territory, parts of the outback of NSW and Queensland. They’ll kick up a stink.
‘(But) until the regulators start doing that, you’re not going to reduce the fatalities on our roads, they just simply won’t come down.’
He said Victoria has done better than the other states in reducing fatalities on its roads.
‘They’ve got terrific roads. They’ve been installing wire rope barriers everywhere.
Prof Grzebieta said that it is just a ‘small minority’ of people who complain about having hidden speed cameras.
‘The majority of NSW agree with it. The small minority … want to be allowed to break the law,’ he said.
‘It’s a really simple formula. Just don’t go over the speed limit and you’re fine, you won’t get fined.’
A Transport for NSW spokesperson said the state government is ‘committed to lowering road trauma … with the road map set out in the 2026 Road Safety Action Plan.
‘It sets new targets to halve deaths and reduce serious injuries by 30 per cent on NSW roads by 2030 as well as actions to contribute toward achieving these targets.’
Daily Mail Australia contacted federal Transport Minister Catherine King for comment.
(dailymail.co.uk)
