The nation’s peak motoring body says a long term safety strategy to lower the crash rate is failing as the road toll reaches its highest point in 15 years.
THE Australian Automobile Association (AAA) has calculated that the year to 31 May was Australia’s deadliest 12 months on the road since 2010, with 1,337 deaths, and an almost five percent jump on last year earlier.
Despite advancing anti crash technology in vehicles, the AAA said the increase was driven in part by large increases in deaths of cyclists (up 36.7 per cent to 41 deaths) and pedestrians (up 15.7 per cent to 192 deaths).
AAA Managing Director Michael Bradley saod the tolls showed the National Road Safety Strategy (2021-30), which was designed by the federal and state governments to halve road deaths by 2030, is not working.
“Far from halving roads deaths as planned, this latest data shows this Strategy has seen fatalities increase 21.9 per cent since its inception,’’ Mr Bradley said.
“This Strategy is due for review and the Federal Government needs to show national leadership and ensure this review gets to the bottom of this worsening crisis.
“This Strategy saw governments commit to road safety interventions that are either not working or not being delivered.
“The upcoming review needs to urgently clarify what’s working, what’s not, and how we need to change the way we’re managing road trauma across Australia.”
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The biggest year-on-year road death increases were in Victoria (5.7 per cent) Queensland (5.9 per cent), Western Australia (12.1 per cent), Tasmania (43.3 per cent) and the ACT (28.6 per cent).
The AAA reports that no state or territory is on track to meet its targets under the National Road Safety Strategy.
It also highlighted that BITRE research from 2022 put the annual economic cost of road trauma to the Australian economy as $27 billion.
The AAA continued its campaign to centralise and open up crash information arguing Federal Transport Minister Catherine King secured promises from state counterparts for greater transparency of road safety data to help inform evidence-based policymaking.
The AAA argues access to this hub of data is critical turning the road toll around.
The Federation Funding Agreement – Infrastructure requires state governments to provide the Commonwealth with road safety data relating to deaths and injuries such as, age, gender, licence status, seating position in the vehicle, severity of injury, duration of driving experience, risky behaviour (drugs, alcohol, speeding, restraint and helmet use, fatigue, distraction), crash type, location, date and time, speed limit, conditions, vehicles involved and registration status, road characteristics (surface type, lanes, barriers, shoulder width, road condition including roughness, strength, rutting, cracking and road risk rating) and road usage, including Average Annual Daily Traffic counts for light and heavy vehicles.