Fatalities falling but not fast enough

A National Road Safety Strategy review says road deaths are dropping but not quickly enough to meet the 2020 NRSS target

The Australian Automobile Association’s latest report, Benchmarking the Performance of the National Road Safety Strategy (NRSS), says there’s much work still to be done for the NRSS to meet is target of reducing road fatalities and serious injuries by 30 per cent by 2020.

The quarterly report, which examines the progress of the NRSS to the end of December 2013, shows that New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and the ACT are on track to meet the strategy’s objective, while Queensland, Tasmania and the Northern Territory are currently ahead of their notional target but require a faster rate improvement to hit the 2020 target.

A total of 312 road fatalities were recorded in the last three months of 2013, the figure eight per cent up on the corresponding period for 2012.

Nationally, Australia still requires a more rapid improvement in fatalities and serious injuries to achieve the NRSS target, despite last year seeing fatalities in some states fall to record lows.

Across the major road-user groups, the categories of passengers and pedestrians are on track to achieve the NRSS target, while the category of drivers requires improvement. Fatalities for motorcyclists and cyclists are higher than the notional target required to meet the NRSS objective.

Driver deaths fell by seven per cent last year compared to 2012, while passenger deaths fell 22.7 per cent, pedestrian deaths fell by 10.5 per cent and motorcyclist deaths fell by 5.4 per cent. At the other end of the scale, cyclist deaths rose by 60 per cent.

According to Andrew McKellar, Chief Executive of the Australian Automobile Association, there’s no room for complacency.

“The year ended with our national road toll at 1193 – 110 fewer lives have been lost on our roads compared with 2012,” he said.

“However, this encouraging news does not mean that road safety no longer requires attention. Continued effort is required to hold road fatalities at current levels and work in needed to even further reduce these needless deaths. We should not accept that 1200 deaths per year is the price to pay to use our roads.”

McKellar also highlighted the need for more detailed reporting of accidents.

“The NRSS estimated the number of serious injuries to be 32,500 per year,” he said.

“This is an enormous amount of trauma, pain and suffering endured by families but, at present, governments across Australia can’t even accurately count the number of serious injuries. An accurate measure of the number of serious injuries is clearly a critical element in reducing the number of serious injuries. At this point, we have no idea whether the actions to reduce deaths have any effect on serious injuries.”

A detailed review of the NRSS will take place in 2014, and will look at additional initiatives to see the strategy meet its goals.

Fatalities falling but not fast enough

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