The first half of 2008 saw a drop in the road toll when compared with the same period in 2007. Between January and June this year, 704 people were killed on Australia’s roads. 805 people died during the same period in 2007.
Prior to this year, road deaths had decreased only slightly – by an average of 0.9 per cent per year between 2002 and 2007. However, in the first nine months of 2008, 1,078 fatalities have occurred on our roads – a nine per cent decrease compared with the same period in 2007.
The number of bicycle riders killed between July 07 and June 08 is also down compared with the previous year, dropping by 34 per cent.
The figures indicate Australia’s road laws, and the harsh penalties for breaking them, are working. Flashing lights marking school zones, reduced speed limits, double demerits over holiday weekends and more restrictions on P-platers all appear to be helping to save lives.
The statistics are saying our roads are getting safer, but are they? If the figure is the result of our road laws, do we make penalties for breaking them even tougher to bring this figure down further?
The penalties are just one part of the safe driving management plan. Just as important are the education, training, regulation and street design issues.
There is really a lot more needs to be done to make our streets safer for people and the travelling public. More than 700 hundred people killed by cars in just 6 months is hardly a good result.
I think speed limits in urban areas should be significantly reduced.
It’s a tricky one. Reducing the road toll is great but rules are pretty strict as it is… I’m all for increased police presence on the road. Fixed cameras however do nothing – you get the fine three weeks later and it only makes you slow down at that particular spot.
Penalties may well be a factor, but there is no mention of Black Spot removal or more importantly, vehicle kilometres travelled in the new environment of $1.50/litre.
With a maximum speed limit of 120 in NSW and 130 in the NT why are ordinary cars built to do 200kph or more? The fact is speeding is fun until you have or cause an accident or get fined.
The speed residential streets and shopping areas should be 40kph as it is in some areas.
Speed is promoted in movies, television and car racing. Clubs have huge car parks – the patrons don’t just go to gamble and be entertained – most of them go to drink then drive home. Anyone found to be driving under the influence should be banned from driving for 10 years.
It is always far too easy and convenient to draw a causal relationship without considering all the inputs. “We did this then this happened!” This is what the politicians do best. Every injury or loss of life on the roads is a tragedy. Let us just be very sure why the road toll is reducing before we credit it to any policy decision.
For example, I heard recently on the news that speed cameras in school zones have captured $40 million in revenue and the conclusion was that the initiative is working. I would contend it is not working as my measure of success would be that they captured $0 of revenue. That would indicate that no one was speeding. Isn’t that the real objective? All speed cameras should be approaching zero infringements but I understand they still draw in consistently high numbers. I accept the number of speeding drivers at a location may drop once a camera goes in but that covers the “smart” few. What worries me are those that continue to get caught when these things are very clearly signposted. For those, it is obviously not working!!
Yeah Robert I am afraid your argument doesn’t really make sense.
‘With a maximum speed limit of 120 in NSW and 130 in the NT why are ordinary cars built to do 200kph or more?’
Australia is years behind the rest of the world in terms of driver education, road laws and infrastructure – that’s not a car manufacturers problem. The reality is that very few accidents are the result of highly excessive speed that the capability of a car has attributed to.
I can have a fatal accident at 120kph on a 120kph zoned road if I drive beyond what the conditions allow me. Just because a car is built to do 200km/h doesn’t mean it will.
Let’s face it – we will never get the road toll to 0. Driving is a dangerous exercise and Australians are generally ill prepared for the act of driving. See anyone on a mobile phone, smoking, fixing their make up or any other number of distracting acts while driving and you know that we have reached a point where ultimate responsibility for the road toll is on the drivers.
No technology, laws, fines or intervention will completely wipe out human error. Cars will be safer, hopefully our roads will be better and some time the future maybe stricter licensing requirements and that will get it down to a minimum.
Beyond this as has been pointed out by Lloyd – we’re driving less, the economic environment has severly impacted on traffic levels and factors like this need to be taken into account as well before we all get excited.
As for Roberts whacky comment about Clubs and car parks – it’s up to an individual not to drink and drive and a legal frame work in place to punish those that do – which we have. It’s also important to understand that this is part of the freedom we enjoy as a nation of personal choice. Finally have you seen how crap public transport infrastructure is in Sydney? Some people have no choice (but to Drive… not drink obviously because drinking and driving is stupid. hear that kids, dumb.)
I don’t know if it’s making them safer at all but I do think that Motorcycles should pay have the toll fare to cars as there’s half the wear and tear on the roads and half of all those other things that our wonderful dollars pay for when we pay tolls (most likely being to line the pockets of the MD’s and CEO’s of the company owners). The cost of toll roads and the number of toll roads in NSW is extortionate and in some areas there is no real choice but to use these roads as all other roads become inaccessible and the cost of tolls costs me more per week than it does to fill up my car so I’ve gone to 2 wheels to make things more economical (as well as reducing my carbon footprint) and I find that although I’m not spending much on petrol, the tolls make things a little less affordable at the end of the month.
I also think that there should be Motorcycle lanes on roads as people in cars do not look out for people on two wheels (especially in peak hour) and tend to change lanes without looking or indicating their intention to change lanes. Riding on two wheels for finacial as well as environmental reasons has left me at the risk of others and their laziness. It’s not that difficult to indicate and it’s not that difficult to indicate an intention to lane change. In fact, I’m pretty sure that when everyone is taught to drive they are taught that these things are essential parts of driving and not just common courtesy (indicating) but the law.
Enough of a rant from me, I’m just more a little upset that I nearly got wipped out by some idiot in peak hour who decided to suddenly change lanes because mine was going faster (by about 2km per hour) without indicating, looking or considering that if I have to stop suddenly, the only thing I have protecting me is clothing & a helmet rather than a metal frame and casing and air bags and yet I have to pay the same tolls/taxes etc. as everyone else. I think riders should be paid some drivers tax dollars as a bonus (or danger money) each year they survive on the roads.
‘just more a little upset that I nearly got wipped out by some idiot’ – this is no surprise as a vast majority of motorists on our roads have no idea how to drive.
It is but a miracle that more people do not die more often on our roads. Actually maybe not a miracle, possibly a great tradgedy. That said – Motorcyclists are completely in control of their own destiny however, they must always be on edge lest the single celled brains of Sydney motorists would destroy them.
Remember using an indicator takes brain power and will.
Sadly Kim, you haven’t reduced your carbon footprint. Motorcycles pollute more than modern cars – they simply use less fuel but do not benefit from the number of engine advancements afforded to cars.
I do know that fixed speed cameras are a waste of time and resources. I have observed so many times slowing traffic before a fixed speed camera and then speeding up again straight after.
This is going to be very badly accepted comment but here goes; why not have speed cameras hidden from easy sight. If you don’t know where they are any drivers with brains would drive to the speed limit just in case of being caught. Mobile speed cameras are not as easily seen but of course there simply aren’t enough Police and resources to have more of them on the road. Now there are going to be screams of “revenue raising” but they
only raise revenue because drivers let them. If you aren’t doing anything wrong what is there to worry about?
That would create a new level of concentration, having to be more aware of your speed, so just might stop drivers from engaging in distracting actions as much while they are driving.
I have 30 years of heavy transport driving behind me, now retired, and more than eight million kilometres driven so have seen it all but have never had my licence suspended or cancelled since getting it on my 17th birthday, now 64, please don’t tell me I was just lucky. I have driven highways that are regarded as killer roads, in all types of weather, without incident so please don’t call me lucky, the only thing I am lucky about is that some maniac driver hasn’t cleaned me up.
Please, it can be done just with exercising care and common sense and respecting the road rules. I am not saying I haven’t been booked for speed, sure I have, but not high enough speed to have my licence suspended or enough bookings in the prescribed time.
What ever the comments about my say, I am proud of my record and will stand by my theory that if more attention was given by drivers when driving then there would be less carnage, if people were content to just get there instead of needing to be first, there would be less carnage. Remember when on holidays it is as much about the journey as it is about the destination. Would you not rather use a couple of hours more in getting there than being dead. Would you not rather use a couple of hours more in getting there than coming back without your wife or child/ children, victims of your impatience?
Please for your own sake and everyone elses don’t worry about being first
just worry about being alive.
Thank you
Like you too Noel, as an ex-truckie, 3 States, now retired, I am also proud of my driving record, when I received my first booking on Hume Highway Chullora, back in 1973, I said to myself that day, that this will be the first and only time that any State Government will get any monies off me.
After 7 motor/cycles, 11 cars, 22 trucks of various tonneages, close to 6-7 million klms, I believe you and I know more about staying alive than the general populace.
It also helps being instructed by the best and that is the Australian Army Transport Corp. I was a gunner/driver in the Royal Australian Artillery and our course ran for 6 weeks, our program held the sunday night evictions long before any TV reality shows, it was training days and nights, 6 days a week with sunday off, you are taught every conceivable situation that can occur when driving army vehicles and I, as a driver for the Artillery, sitting on 5 tonnes of high explosives plus petrol and oils, grenades and bullets, one also must consider that your gun-mates lives are in your hands.
Believe me, the thought of rolling an artillery vehicle gives me the shudders, the Army Transport does not train cowboys nor do they waste time with idiots whom do not have the mental capacity to drive under pressure ( war-zones). Our motto, ” one flash and your ash” still holds dear to me and I drive accordingly to the conditions.
I am sure that Noel and I can read other road-users their minds and what they about to do, that is how I survived so long on m/cycles, when you can do this, you will survive, just treat every-one as the enemy, that they are out to get you. When I had my sons with me on holidays, I would tell them what the various vehicle drivers will do in front of us before it happened, they were always astonished as to how I could foretell something that hadn’t happened as yet.
I am constantly amazed when a shark or crocodile takes an Australian life there is an uproar of revenge, to kill it, hunt it down, end its life, but when Australians die on our roads its just turn the page and read the comics, as long as its not me, why should I care attitude and that my friends is why the road-toll will not go away, when Australia lost 600 sons, brothers and fathers in the Vietnam war there was an almighty outcry of grief, but since then we have lost over 40,000 killed on our roads and hundreds of thousands injured and still we have single lanes on a major highway, the mind boggles.
There are lies, damned lies and statistics
You say:
“The statistics are saying our roads are getting safer, but are they? If the figure is the result of our road laws, do we make penalties for breaking them even tougher to bring this figure down further?”
The figures, as stated don’t tell us much.
(Both Lloyd and Ian above make valid points on this topic)
I would really like to know the accident rate per vehicle/kms travelled.
I would like to know the raw accident rate per km travelled also, as cars are much safer than before and increasing so with ABS, ESP, airbags, side curtains etc
But leaving all that aside; if we really want to bring the road toll down we will have:
1. Driver Education in schools
2. Graded licences for all vehicles (not just motorcycles)
3. Viable Public Transport infrastructure
4. Better roads
5. More sensible Road Rules
For example, with 30 kms visibility and no bends I can still only do 110k/hr on the Nullabor. I can go just as fast on the Prices Hwy as I can on the Pacific! Good god, where’s the sanity in that.
What about driver skills and especially attitudes? There was a time when the police had a high profile presence on the roads and most drivers complied with the road rules.
These days it’s becoming unusual for drivers to use their turn signals to indicate that they’re going to turn. Use them to indicate that they’re going to suddenly swerve into another lane with 1 metre of clearance on high speed roads like the M5? Hardly ever.
Drivers are becoming so sloppy, careless, and aggressive that it’s surprising the road toll isn’t increasing. Personally I’d like to see many more police patrolling the roads and booking drivers for ignoring the rules including failing to signal intention and tailgating, but all the NSW government does is install more and more revenue…. errr, I mean *safety* cameras.