Although we have seen some improvement in Australia in 2007 and 2008, road trauma continues to impose a huge burden on the community. The annual economic cost of road crashes is enormous — conservatively estimated at $18 billion per annum — and the social impacts are devastating. Besides lives cut tragically short, debilitating injuries often result in pain, grief and suffering that have lifelong impacts on victims, families and communities. Road safety is a shared responsibility. Every person who uses the roads has an obligation to act safely. Governments are required to contribute leadership and resources to improving road safety, including developing and enforcing laws, providing safer roads, informing the public about road safety issues and fostering improvements in vehicle safety. Employers have considerable power to ensure that their corporate policy and practice work to support a safety culture on the roads. The vehicle industry is expected to produce safer vehicles and to display social responsibility in the way vehicles are promoted for sale. Road user, employee and insurance groups also have an important role in encouraging safety among their members and policy holders. The National Road Safety Strategy 2001—2010 was established with the aim of dramatically reducing death and serious injury on Australian roads. It had the specific c numeric target of decreasing the annual number of road deaths per 100,000 population by 40 per cent over the decade, to no more than 5.6 by December 2010. As we assess our progress since the commencement of the Strategy, we face the prospect of not achieving the 2010 target. While we have seen periods of signifi cant road safety improvement over the last eight years, the average rate of reduction in national road deaths is below the rate required to meet the target. In the final two years of the decade, we must remain focused on the primary objective of the National Road Safety Strategy: striving to bring about continuing reductions in the number of people killed and injured on the nation’s roads. This is the final two-year Action Plan under the current Strategy. It outlines measures with clear potential to reduce road trauma in the shorter term, as well as to provide the foundation for longer term improvements. Many of the listed actions are not new, but they are still important. The task for all parties to the Action Plan is to make a concerted collaborative effort to increase the rate of implementation of these priority measures. (Author/publisher)
Abstract