Page 2671 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 26 September 2007
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the treatment of black spots, regulate new vehicle standards and monitor vehicle safety recalls, and facilitate the sharing of ideas among stakeholders. Accordingly, this Strategy has been developed as a framework document which recognises the safety plans of the Federal, State, Territory and local governments and other organisations involved in road safety. Individual governments will continue to develop and implement their own road safety strategies and programs consistent with this Strategy but reflecting local imperatives.
The National Road Safety Strategy aims to dramatically reduce death and injury on Australian roads. Road crashes are a major cause of human trauma. There have been over 163,000 road fatalities in Australia. In addition to the burden of personal suffering, the monetary cost of crashes has been estimated to be in the order of $15 billion per annum …
This improvement has come at a price in terms of money and social responsibility. The Australian people have been asked—and have agreed—to pay for safety in vehicles and for better roads, and to accept tougher regulations and enforcement measures. Most importantly, people have heeded the call to drive more responsibly. Australia achieved significant reductions in the road toll in the early and mid 1990s but since 1997 the road toll has remained constant. There is much more that we can and must do. Some other developed nations are achieving fatality rates of just 60% of our rate and these nations are working towards further ambitious reductions.
Our target is to achieve a 40% reduction in the number of fatalities per 100,000 population by 2010. It is a difficult target, but an achievable one. Achieving this target will save about 3,600 lives over the next 10 years. It is a target that will require strenuous effort by all parties involved in road safety. In addition to our own transport agencies we therefore ask for the continuing support of road users and user groups, the media, police, health care providers, schools, local government, vehicle builders, employers and the wider community.
The challenge is to move our thinking from ways to limit the toll to how to create a genuinely safe road transport system, and to work out how to achieve such a system.
Having mentioned the community’s awareness of the importance of road safety and the national strategy plan to address it, I would now like to bring it closer to home. A study conducted by the NRMA-ACT Road Safety Trust in May of 2007 compares the amount of driving done by ACT drivers in NSW with that done in the ACT itself. In its summary, the report states:
The ACT’s impressive road safety record is often attributed to its well designed road network. However, many ACT residents regularly travel in NSW. Previous studies by … NRMA-ACT Road Safety Trust have found that as many fatal crashes involving ACT vehicles occur in NSW as in the ACT and that high numbers of ACT vehicles are involved in injury crashes in NSW (although fewer than in the ACT …
That information was obtained by Imberger, Styles and Cairney in 2005. The summary continues:
The main findings are set out below.
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