The Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) is responsible for road safety in NSW, and is required to provide leadership on road and traffic safety issues. Accordingly, road safety is one of the RTA's eight key result areas. In conjunction with the commitment to improve road safety, the RTA is also committed to implementing the RTA Ethnic Affairs Policy Statement in order to effectively provide information, services and programs appropriate to a multicultural society in NSW. In response to these requirements, this paper will seek to examine the road safety needs of people from a non-English speaking background (NESB), in order to ensure that the road safety countermeasures implemented by the RTA are appropriate to the multicultural society. When the Commonwealth Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs conducted a survey into the information needs of NESB people, they found that there was little difference between NESB and English speaking background (ESB) people in the type of need experienced. Those differences that there were, were based on the intensity of the need, rather than the type of need. This principle will be applied in this paper to the area of assessing the road safety information needs of NESB road users. That is, it is assumed that NESB road users have a need for information on road safety issues such as drink driving, excessive speed, driver fatigue, non-use of occupant restraints and so on, just as do ESB road users. It is also assumed, however, that NESB road users may require strategies which differ from those used for the ESB population in order to satisfy their need for this road safety information. Finally, while the road safety needs of Aboriginal people are not examined in this document, primarily because of a lack of information in this area, the need for a similar needs assessment to be carried out for the Aboriginal community is fully acknowledged.
Samenvatting