Zero tolerance for road deaths
THERE is an attitude among many people that because certain circumstances repeatedly occur, they will continue to occur. We should never accept that attitude towards NSW’s road toll.
Opinion
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THERE is an attitude among many people that because certain circumstances repeatedly occur, they will continue to occur.
That attitude was widely prevalent across much of New York City in 1990, when a staggering 2262 people were murdered. At the time some felt such a murder rate, although appalling, was simply a part of living in a city with a population of more than eight million.
But others believed the murder rate could be reduced. Zero tolerance policing policies were established across all of New York’s crime hot spots. Repeat offenders who had been constantly jailed and bailed were put behind bars for long periods. Drug dealers and users were targeted by dedicated squads.
The results were remarkable. New York’s murder rate began to decline, slowly at first, and then precipitously. This year New York will record fewer than 300 homicides — some 14.5 per cent fewer than in 2016.
Consider those figures again, and marvel at this fact: the number of murders in New York, population 8.5 million, is less than the number of people who have died on NSW roads this year. It is safer to walk around New York at any hour than it is to drive in NSW.
Yet there are still those who believe a road toll of hundreds every single year is something of an inevitability, given the number of kilometres covered annually throughout our state.
This simply is not so. Every one of those kilometres involves decisions that, if made intelligently, will deliver drivers and passengers safely to their destinations. The road toll is largely a consequence of decisions made recklessly.
Other decisions, too, have an impact upon our road toll. It is now known that the driver who crashed head-on into the Falkholt family’s car on Boxing Day, killing parents Lars and Vivian and leaving their daughters Jessica and Annabelle fighting for their lives, was a serial traffic offender and drug user.
Craig Anthony Whitall, 50, who also died in the inferno, had been jailed for driving while disqualified and was driving on P plates having only recently got his licence back.
“Sadly, too many innocent people have died because of the irresponsible and reckless actions of others, and it has to stop,” Assistant Commissioner Michael Corboy said yesterday. “The community has had enough and so have we.”
He speaks for many. Zero tolerance worked in New York and it can work on our roads.