Road safety culture development for substantial road trauma reduction : can the experience of the State of Victoria, Australia, be applied to achieve road safety improvement in north America?

The State of Victoria, Australia has improved its road safety performance substantially in the periods 1989 to 1992 and since 2001. The lessons learned from this experience suggest that mechanisms by which governments and communities can achieve improved road safety outcomes are not well understood and have received little research attention. A clear recognition and understanding of principles and processes which will assist change are fundamentally important if new countermeasure proposals are to achieve community acceptance over time. Proponents of change need to be well equipped if their ideas are to negotiate the difficult course of public debase and bring about greater acceptance (albeit, often incrementally) in public attitudes. This paper outlines the new road safety thinking developed in Victoria, Australia including the focus on road safety performance measurement which is a key driver of road safety management. It compares road safety outcomes with the current situation in the USA. The paper suggests that consideration be given to implementation of a tailored pilot implementation in selected states of the US. Such implementation would be based, in particular, on a more complete understanding of how the transition from concept to implementable reality can occur.