Approaches to improving road safety in Australia will continue to be guided by ‘safe system’ principles, which fundamentally involve two objectives: making the road transport system more forgiving of human error, while acting to minimise the contribution of unsafe road user behaviour to road crashes. Vigorous action is required in 2007 and 2008 by all jurisdictions to achieve a major step-down in road deaths: to get back on track towards the 2010 National Road Safety Strategy target, and to provide a basis for continuing progress beyond 2010. This will involve concurrent short and longer term actions in several areas: • education and enforcement measures addressing road user behaviour, with speed management as an important priority • improving the safety of roads and roadsides • accelerating the introduction of vehicles with improved safety systems. Communication strategies will be designed to engage the community in road safety and convey a better understanding of road risk issues to all road users. All jurisdictions will work towards achieving a more effective performance monitoring and progress measurement system, including the development of a set of key road safety performance indicators. Recognising that road safety is a major public health issue, more effective partnerships will be built between the road safety and health sectors to raise the national profile of road safety and incorporate the research and perspectives of the health sector in addressing issues. A high level of cooperation among and within jurisdictions has characterised Australia’s progress in road safety. Building on this, road safety agencies, local government authorities, police services and other agencies involved in road safety will collaborate even more comprehensively in implementing a range of measures supported by research and intelligence. More extensive international collaboration and knowledge sharing are also planned. Specification items supported by research and analysis are set out in Section 4. (Author/publisher)
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