Opinion: Road safety gains have stalled
Raphael Grzebieta
When the nation's best and brightest gather soon in Canberra for the Australia 2020 Summit, their task will be to think and plan in ways that go beyond the usual brief electoral cycle.
It's a welcome strategic move in public policy-setting: long-term issues - such as education, health, science, innovation, the environment and infrastructure - respect electoral cycles no more than they do state boundaries. Like the poor, they're always with us.
But the list of 10 "critical areas" for consideration is missing one issue of vital and fundamental importance to our economy and our community: road safety. Sadly, it's with us, too, and it's currently going nowhere.
Since 1925, when statistics were first recorded, four times as many Australians - 172,000 of them - have been killed in road accidents than in all wars. That's enough to people a city the size of Gosford or Wollongong.
We're all worried about climate change and increasing natural disasters. Yet if we count all the Australian victims of natural and man-made disasters to date - including the Granville train crash, Cyclone Tracy, all bushfires (Ash Wednesday, Black Friday, Canberra) and the Bali bombings - the total number comes to about 850.
But deaths are only part of the road accident story: for every life lost in a car crash another 10 to 12 people are seriously injured often with debilitating life-long effects. Since 1925, about two million Australians have been seriously injured in this way - enough to populate a city the size of Brisbane. Traffic crashes are a leading cause of accidental injury and death among our young people.
The carnage was at its numerical worst in the post-war era. The highest annual road toll recorded was in 1978 when an appalling 3,705 Australians died - a death rate of 25.8 per 100,000 population.
Since then - thanks to seat belts, helmets, airbags, random breath testing, speed cameras, crash barriers, more stringent vehicle standards and investment in better roads - we have managed to make our roads steadily safer. By 1988, the death rate had fallen to 17.5; a decade later it had plunged to 9.4.
Last year, the rate had dropped a little further, to 7.7, although more than 1,600 lost lives are embraced by that bare statistic. What is of concern is that the figure is unchanged from 2004: in short, we have been stalled for three years. This means we are now unlikely to reach the target of 5.6 road deaths per 100,000 by 2010, despite much good work by the road safety community.
That target was set in the National Road Safety Strategy, endorsed by all levels of government in 2000. Achieving it would have meant saving 700 lives and 7,000 serious injuries a year.
The immense grief, pain and suffering that ensue from road crashes have their parallel in the financial cost, which now amounts to about $17 billion a year. This is equivalent to the respective budgets for defence and education, and half the entire health budget. Almost every portfolio, every age group, every community, feels the effects.
If ever an issue demanded a whole-of-government approach and a prominent seat at the table of strategic thinking, this is it.
Public spending on roads is massive because an efficient and safe road transport system underpins our nation's economy. But while road safety efforts have focussed on driver behaviour and vehicle safety systems, there appears to be a lack of awareness by the engineering profession of the vital role it must now play in implementing the "safe systems" approach to reducing road trauma in any future road investment.
For example, Australia's roads have been and are predominantly designed on the basis of US standards. Roads are wide and there's plenty of room for speeding and reckless driving. It is also an expensive way to build roads. In effect, we have modelled our road system on the design standards of a country with the worst road safety record of all the OECD nations (43,000 deaths a year; 16 per 100,000 population).
Meanwhile, Europe is making enormous road safety gains using a different mindset. Road design and construction is considered in combination with safer vehicles. These roads cost much less to build than their US counterparts yet still maintain excellent transport efficiency.
They are based on the notion that crashes are inevitable. Hence, roads should be designed first to minimise crashes, then to make them survivable when they happen. The result is a leaner, more efficient and yet vastly safer road system (5 deaths per 100,000 population).
Australia has led the way in road safety in many ways, as evidenced by foreign demand for our expertise. Now, though, a perception has emerged that there are "no more silver bullets" in road safety to reduce road trauma - it's all too hard.
This view is quite wrong, as Europe has shown. We certainly need fresh thinking and fresh commitment nationally, and we need long-term strategies that recognise the paramount importance of safety when we pour billions of dollars into road-building and maintenance between now and 2020.
More imperative, though, is to do our very best to prevent five Australians being killed and a further 60 maimed each and every day.
Professor Raphael Grzebieta is President of the Australasian College of Road Safety and Chair of Road Safety at the UNSW Injury Risk Management Research Centre.
