Page 754 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 29 March 2006
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children get ill. We worry about their education. We take that responsibility particularly seriously. Yet people still travel down the street with kids aged six not buckled up in the back of a car. They are not taking their responsibilities particularly seriously.
I thank Ms MacDonald for raising the issue today. If we can raise the level of responsibility in this town through this conversation that we are having, maybe we will go some way to reducing that horrendous figure of 26 last year. This year so far we have got two. We are a quarter of the way into the year. So far the year is looking good. But let us hope that everybody accepts their responsibilities and we do not have anything approaching 26 for 2006.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (12.20): I will be supporting Ms MacDonald’s motion today. Of course it would be almost impossible not to support a motion like this. There is no doubt that this is an issue that is never, ever going to be solved and go away while people move around our roads in any form of vehicle whatsoever.
How much effect will our talking here have on accident statistics this year? Sadly, I do not believe it will have a great deal. We might have talked about it last year, too. And 26 people died. A much larger number of people, no doubt, suffer permanent impact either from the loss of somebody from their family or their friendship group, or through injury. It is a great scourge on our lives. It is the price we pay for a lifestyle that requires us to move quite quickly around the city.
There are all kinds of reasons why accidents happen. Some of those have been addressed today. I addressed a few of them yesterday when much of my speech was deemed irrelevant. So I do not want to go over that same ground.
I mention a number of things that I do not believe have been mentioned today. The ACT road safety action plan is, indeed, a worthwhile document, and it is really important that we have one of those. The proof of the pudding is in how well an action plan is implemented. We know that some of the biggest causes of road accidents are people driving too fast or people driving unsafely. Often that is exacerbated by their being under the influence of excessive amounts of alcohol or using drugs that impair people’s reaction times and perception.
Mr Mulcahy: So you support laws on that? Do you support testing on that?
DR FOSKEY: We have already been through that debate. These things can only be reduced by people being concerned. Mr Mulcahy mentioned testing. That is something that—and I referred to it yesterday and referred to it the last time we talked about it—we agree on. But it has to be testing that works. While that is true of alcohol at the moment, we are not there yet on other drugs.
One of the things that Mr Hargreaves mentioned was the death of five pedestrians last year. That is something that indicates the priority that we in this city give to cars. Pedestrians have to be careful, but we must also recognise that there are pedestrians on our roads. We have some suburbs where we do not have footpaths and where people have no choice but to walk on roads. Often the roads in the suburbs are quite narrow as well. There is also a tendency sometimes for people not to stop at pedestrian crossings.
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