In response to an unacceptable level of road trauma in Western Australia, the Government has adopted Towards Zero, an ambitious strategy to reduce trauma by 40 per cent by 2020. To ensure that WA has the capability to effectively implement such an ambitious strategy the Road Safety Council commissioned a review of the road safety management capacity in WA. Road safety management capacity is defined as our readiness and capability to implement the necessary actions in an effective, efficient and timely manner and achieve the changes in policy, standards and practice required to create a safe road transport system. During the period of this review, the Government announced that from 1 July 2012, all revenue from speed and red light camera infringements would be allocated to road safety initiatives which from current estimates will provide an additional $50m per year. While this is a major step forward, Towards Zero estimates that an additional $200m per year for 12 years is required to implement the safe system changes. This review therefore recommends further work to define and source the additional resources. While new resources are required to achieve a “kick start” or “step down” in road trauma this review also identifies the critical importance of ensuring that changes in thinking, policy, standards and practice are applied to the existing resources used by the primary road safety agencies to ensure they contribute to best practice in creating a safe system for all road users. With high expectations and increased resources it is vital that governance, accountability and performance frameworks are strengthened. Changes will not be possible without ensuring that the road safety professionals have the necessary knowledge, training and expertise. Having pursued road safety improvement strongly over the past two decades through a series of strategic plans and evidence based actions Western Australia has made significant progress in reducing per capita death rates resulting from road crashes. However, the results being achieved indicate that there is still some way to go if people using WA roads are to experience the same level of safety as people using roads in the majority of Australian States and overseas. The rate of improvement lags behind average trends in Australia and internationally. While WA had the second best performance in Australia in the 1990’s it now has the worst road safety record of any Australian State. The road death rate across WA in 2010 was 8.4 people killed per 100,000 of population which is about twice that of the global leaders. There is a great divide between metropolitan and regional WA. On rural roads the very high annual rate of 21 people killed per 100,000 population is more than 4 times worse than that of the metropolitan area and compares to performance achieved in low-income countries in the Asia-Pacific region and countries such as Thailand and Uganda. These results are clearly unacceptable and require a strong evidence based response by Government on behalf of the WA community. In March 2009 the WA Government endorsed the Towards Zero road safety strategy which had been recommended by the Road Safety Council following a review of evidence, best practice and extensive community and stakeholder consultation. Towards Zero, is a bold and ambitious, world class strategy with bipartisan support that aims to reduce the number of people killed or seriously injured on WA roads by 40 per cent by 2020, a saving of over 11,000 people from serious trauma. This requires an additional $200m per year for the 12 year life of Towards Zero to progressively upgrade urban intersections and rural road sides to a safe system standard, enhance enforcement of drink-driving and speeding and community education and improve governance and accountability. If fully implemented the results from Towards Zero would bring WA into line with the best performing Australian States by 2020. A 60 per cent improvement would see WA approach the best performing countries overseas in road safety. Towards Zero heralds a fundamental shift in the way we go about road safety improvement that differs substantially from the typical targeted approaches of the past. Towards Zero aims to reduce road trauma substantially by creating a safe road system that provides more protection. It adopts the principles of a ‘fail safe’ system. Building upon past approaches, the safe system expects people to use the roads with due care and attention and it expects greater levels of compliance with key safety rules (such as speed limits, driving unimpaired by alcohol and other drugs and the appropriate use of safety equipment such as seatbelts and child restraints) through enhanced enforcement, education and greater use of technology. The safe system goes beyond a focus on improving behaviour to build greater forgiveness for human errors into the design of roads, vehicles and travel speeds to help avoid crashes in the first place, or when they still occur, to reduce the likelihood of serious harm. To be effective, the elements of the system (travel speed, the vehicle and the road and roadside) combine to offer sufficient protection to transform a potentially fatal crash into one that is survivable without serious injury supported by good medical recovery and treatment. The safe system requires significant changes to be made. This requires our planners, our road designers, builders and operators, our Police and our educators to think and act differently and to go beyond usual practice and current standards to build greater inherent safety into our road transport system. An ambitious and world class strategy for improvement will not be successful in achieving results unless it is implemented effectively and fully in a timely manner. A capacity review examines our readiness or capability to be able to effectively implement the ambitious set of road safety actions and changes to existing practice required to build a safe system to substantially reduce road trauma. Our capacity to create a safe system is dependent on governmental leadership, increased and sustained investment and changes to policy, standards and practice and acceptance of shared responsibility for road safety. Our road safety professionals must have skills and knowledge developed to the highest possible degree, including a capacity to engage with other sectors and the wider community. A focus on achieving results requires ownership and accountability not just in the lead agency, but equally in key partner agencies. This means a requirement for challenging but achievable interim targets and performance indicators. To ensure that Western Australia has the necessary capacity to launch the implementation of Towards Zero and to realise ambitious results, the Road Safety Council commissioned a team of international experts in 2010 to conduct a road safety management capacity review using a ‘state of the art’ road safety management assessment framework developed and used by the World Bank (see figure). It is built upon global good practice and has been adopted by both the International Transport Forum and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The Capacity Review Team made over 90 wide ranging recommendations based on this road safety management framework. In response, the Road Safety Council established a working party to analyse the Report and to prepare recommendations for Government. The recommendations in this report were endorsed by the Road Safety Council at its July 2011 meeting. (Author/publisher)
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