New road safety campaign launched between The Advertiser and SA Police ahead of Easter
A bid to reduce fatalities and serious injuries on SA roads is at the forefront of a new safety campaign launching today, amid plans requiring motorcyclists to have one year’s L-plate car driving experience before riding a bike.
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- APRIL: Three killed during horrific three hours on SA roads
- MARCH: Three killed on South Australian roads in 17 hours
- JANUARY: Two teen motorcyclists die in a week
More than 10 people a year on average have been killed or seriously injured on South Australian roads over the past six Easter long weekends, new figures reveal.
On the eve of one of the state’s busiest holiday periods, The Advertiser, in partnership with SA Police, is today launching Enough is Enough — a campaign to help reduce road deaths and serious injuries.
READ BELOW: A plea from the frontline: ‘Complacency is the big killer on our roads’
There have been 36 lives lost on SA roads so far this year, compared with 22 at the same time last year.
Seven people have died and a further 57 have been seriously injured over the Easter long weekend between 2013 and 2018, SA Police and Transport Department figures show.
RAA road safety senior manager Charles Mountain urged motorists to keep this Easter fatality free, especially when driving on regional roads.
“Historic crash data shows 70 per cent of fatalities occur on rural roads with the condition of the roads and driver distraction among the biggest causes of collisions with the potential for tragic outcomes,” Mr Mountain said.
This year, with school holidays coinciding with Easter long weekend and Anzac Day, Traffic Support Branch Superintendent Bob Gray said the risk of a crash was three times greater on the eve of Good Friday than any other day.
Supt Gray said all available officers would be out in force at main arterial roads into and out of Adelaide from midday today to midnight on Tuesday.
“Each year, vast numbers of people travel to regional areas before, during and after the Easter long weekend, increasing the number of drivers travelling in areas they may not normally frequent,” he said.
SA Police Commissioner Grant Stevens said the collaboration with The Advertiser was one of the results from a quarterly meeting held earlier this month, when senior officers explored a range of strategies on road safety.
“Working with The Advertiser I think provides us with an opportunity to let the work we already do in the road safety space, hopefully, make a difference in the statistics by the end of the year,” he said.
“The overwhelming number of South Australians drive safely and responsibly and comply with all the road rules.
“We want to put our energy into those who don’t abide the road rules.”
Police Minister Corey Wingard said he wanted to change people’s use of the phrase “road toll”.
“It hurts me when people say road toll because a toll indicates something you have to give up to pay for what you’re doing,” he said.
“It’s not a price you pay, there is a choice and making right choices is the way to go.
“One death is one death too many but the big point to make here is they could have been avoided.”
A PLEA FROM THE FRONTLINE: ‘COMPLACENCY IS THE BIG KILLER ON OUR ROADS’
By Josephine Lim
These are the people who may one day save your life on the road.
These are South Australia’s emergency responders who witness first-hand the aftermath of road crashes, the ones who cut through metal and pull people out of the wreckage, the ones who speak reassuringly as they stem flowing blood from open wounds.
They are the parents, grandparents and partners who go home with horrific imagery of road trauma, hoping their friends and families are not the next ones involved.
Ahead of the Easter long weekend, they are reminding motorists to make right decisions on our roads.
Metropolitan Fire Service road awareness program co-ordinator Mark Sutton, who regularly speaks to high school students, said most crashes he attended were preventable. “We talk about them being crashes not accidents,” he said.
“Speeding, drugs, mobile phone distractions — they are all choices people make and those choices lead to risks on the road that have consequences.”
Mr Sutton said training kicked in when emergency services crews arrived at a crash site — but it was afterwards that the effect of what they had witnessed was truly felt.
“I had a crash once doing CPR on a lady while her husband and two kids sat in the gutter and watched us. It plays on your mind thinking it could have been my kids. Imagine if that was my wife having to watch me do CPR,” he said.
“You always go home and hug your kids, let them know you care about them.” State Emergency Service South Coast unit manager Michael Fix said the emotional effect of road trauma was far-reaching in smaller communities.
“Twenty-four members to attend six-plus fatalities (last year) is a really significant burden on the people,” he said.
“It really is a far reaching effect — the person involved in the crash, emergency services, their families, bystanders who are first on the scene.
“The trauma differentiates between if they’ve died before we get there — obviously we can’t do anything about that — or if someone dies while we’re there. That has a significant impact on people because you questioned yourself.
“It’s not something you should do but human nature is you do it, you can’t help it.”
Country Fire Service regional duty officer Steve Salamon said: “It’s everything from getting the call at three in the morning to going to deal with a car crash somewhere in the local area.
“Crews arrived to find it’s someone from their immediate group of friends or family, it weighs very heavily on them.”
SA Police Traffic Support Branch Superintendent Bob Gray said it was “frustrating” when safety messages went unheeded.
He said some of the people killed on SA roads so far this year were middle-aged motorcyclists and those not wearing seatbelts on regional roads, some who were only several kilometres away from home.
“People need to guard against being complacent because complacency is a killer,” Supt Gray said. “People think it’s never going to happen to them, it’s going to happen to someone else and that’s not the case at all.”
While road fatalities usually garner more attention, emergency services save lives on a daily basis, most of which do not make the news.
MedSTAR senior retrieval consultant Dr Dan Ellis is also the trauma director at Royal Adelaide Hospital.
He has seen road crash victims recover, weeks or months later, because first responders were able to give quality care to the patient at the crash site.
“It’s all well and good to have a wonderful trauma centre but if patients are taking too long to get to the trauma centre and not getting the right level of treatment, by the time they get there, it might be too late,” he said. “I can’t stress enough, the best thing to have happened is if (the crash) never happened at all. That would be the message we give to South Australians.”
OUR CAMPAIGN AIMS TO DRAW A LINE IN THE SAND
To put it bluntly, South Australia’s growing road toll can no longer be tolerated.
So far this year, there have been 36 deaths on SA roads – 14 more than at the same time last year.
This should concern every road user, every family. It is a source of intense frustration for our emergency workers.
Today The Advertiser, in partnership with SA Police, launches Enough is Enough, a campaign aimed at reducing the road toll and serious injuries between now and the end of the year.
A focus of this campaign will be to highlight the human cost of every serious road crash. This will include the families and friends of those seriously injured; the emergency workers affected by trauma; and the doctors, counsellors and physical therapists, who often spend years helping to rehabilitate victims. There will also be a strong focus on education.
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