Lower road toll not for celebration

The Australian Automobile Association has slammed the federal government’s stalled action on bringing down the nation’s road toll.

The AAA says the evidence shows Australia will not reduce its annual road toll to the hoped for 998 before December next year, and condemns the Morrison government’s minimal effort responding to the National Road Safety Strategy Inquiry.

The current road toll of 1146 people killed on Australian roads is higher than the 12-month period to March 2015, which the AAA says shows figures will “fluctuate from state to state and year to year”.

AAA chief executive Michael Bradley says the country’s leaders are not stepping up.

“There were 12 recommendations made in September last year by the independent Inquiry into the National Road Safety Strategy 2011-2020; to date the Government has committed to just one of these, a review of our federal road safety bureaucracy,” he says.
Bradley says the 1146 people killed on Australian roads in 2018 is nothing to be proud of, whether it’s state or federal governments.

“This devastating count of human lives highlights that the National Road Strategy, agreed to in 2011, is failing because of a lack of resources and willpower from politicians and bureaucrats alike”, he deplores.

The AAA condemns the government’s stalling in responding to and implementing the recommendations from the inquiry, which also confirmed Australia’s road safety strategy was “grossly underfunded”, as well as proving that data collection “embarrassing”.
“Today’s response from the Federal Government should have been to outline how those findings will be addressed to save more lives on our roads. Instead the response glosses over the recommendations and the fact that the road toll is higher today than just three years ago”, Bradley rues.

The 2016 road toll at the time was the country’s highest count of fatalities in motor vehicles crashes in five years.

Bradley suggests the coalition government should match the committment from the Labor opposition which promised to establish a Federal Office of Road Safety if it wins office in this year’s election.

“This would be a good start,” Bradley concludes.