We need to reduce the road toll further

Regular columnist Andrew Gale talks about the harsh realities of our road toll

PRESERVING LIFE: Despite making a lot of progress in reducing the road toll around Australia since his school days, Andrew Gale wants that number drop even further. Picture: Contributed

WIFEY and I recently went to our respective 30-year high school reunions.

People find it hard to believe she's that old. No one doubts it with me though.

We both went to school in the Southern Bayside parts of Brisbane. Wynnum and Cleveland.

It was great to catch up with old friends, have a laugh or two and remember how things were back in high school and primary school before that.

When I lived there as a child it was a shire and a land of red soil, vegetables and strawberries and other crops grown on smaller scales than out here in the Downs and further west.

The Redlands were connected to Brisbane by Old Cleveland Rd, a winding two-lane carriage way. It was upgraded, at least to Chandler in 1982 when the Commonwealth Games were held.

In 2017 most of the farmlands are covered in houses and Old Cleveland Rd a multi-laned, divided highway which is packed with cars from before sun-up to well into the night as the commuters travel backwards and forwards from work to home.

When I drive around there now I also think of the number of people I used to know who didn't make it to the reunion of the class of '86.

It honestly doesn't take too long to come to a corner, hill or intersection, or even a straight bit of those roads I knew so well as a young man, where someone I knew lost their life, or at best wrecked their car.

The area where I grew up certainly has grown, though some would say "not for the better”.

Houses, population and community infrastructure have all increased.

One thing that I am glad to say has gone backwards though is the road toll. Quite dramatically so, too.

In the early 1970s, about the time I started school, Australia's road toll was about 3600 to 3800 persons killed per year.

As a percentage of population, Australians were dying at a rate of about 27 people per 100,000 of our population or about, around 45 deaths for every 100,000 cars and 40 deaths per billion kilometres travelled.

Fast forward to now and we have managed to get that figure down nationally to about 1200 people killed.

That's only a third of the total deaths back when I started school.

When you consider population and the number of cars now on the road the numbers start to look even better with numbers of less than five deaths per 100,000 of population, 100,000 cars and billion kilometres travelled.

My dream is for those numbers to be lower. It's easy to forget that every one of those numbers was a person, with hopes and dreams and friends and family.

I'd like to hope that by the time my youngest child goes to his 30 year school reunion we could have reduced them down as dramatically again.

How many road deaths a year are acceptable? 1000 per year? 500? Five?

To try to put this in perspective, I'm going to borrow a concept from the Victorian Accident Commission TV ad of 2015.

What if the 500 were all people on your Facebook friends list? What if the five were your direct family? Your mum, dad, brothers, sisters or your kids?

I don't know about you, but when we look it that way there is only one answer: 0.