The main purpose of this study was to review road safety policies and programs in other states and territories of Australia in order to identify practices that could be implemented in Western Australia to prevent road traffic crashes and injuries. In these states, the framework for administering road safety has been established to encourage intersectoral activity, and there are formal mechanisms for interagency coordination at a strategic level, a policy level and an operational level. These states also tend to closely monitor and evaluate the performance of their road safety initiatives, so that it is possible to determine their effectiveness and to have a baseline from which to plan new activities. The study also compared the delivery of three of the main road safety programs in each of the states, namely the random breath testing program, the speed enforcement program and mass media publicity activities. In many program areas, there is some general agreement developing about how to optimize program performance. There are considerable differences in the intensity at which states operate their road safety programs, with Victoria and New South Wales generally committing more resources to most program areas than the other states. Penalty structures were also examined, and it was found that Victoria generally has the most severe penalties for drink driving and speeding offenses, while Western Australia has among the least. Some other factors that affect road safety performance were also discussed. The report includes some recommendations about actions that should be taken to improve road safety performance in Western Australia. (A)
Abstract