Abstract
At current road funding levels in Australia, it has been shown that the percentage of travel taking place on roads that users could reasonably assess as substandard, is increasing.Despite this, the budget percentage allocated to roads by the political system where such priority decisions are appropriately made, is decreasing. The question of road safety implications of what might be regarded as "lowering of standards" is addressed and it is suggested that when road safety is considered across the whole network instead of at single project level, such initiatives are likely to be cost effective in a road safety sense.