Covid restrictions fail to curb the death rate on Australian roads

Australia’s road fatality crisis has worsened despite Covid-19 restrictions keeping many people homebound, sparking demands for greater national leadership.

The pandemic has kept many people at home, but has not stopped the road toll from rising.

Australia’s road fatality crisis has worsened despite Covid-19 restrictions this year keeping many people homebound, with trauma experts and motoring bodies calling for greater national leadership and data transparency around road safety.

Fresh figures reveal the country experienced a 1.4 per increase in road deaths over the 12 months to November 2021, even as the nation’s eastern states endured months of Delta lockdowns.

Department of Transport data revealed there were 1126 deaths in the 12 months to November 2021 compared with 1100 to ­November 2020.

The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons national trauma committee chair John Crozier said the latest figures underscored the need for the commonwealth to step up to lead the national calibration of road safety data, pointing to the pandemic as an exercise in swift collation of national figures.

“We know that as a nation we can pull good quality data together quickly but we haven’t done that with the constant silent epidemic of death and serious injuries on our roads,” he told The Australian.

The government data revealed that Queensland recorded the largest increase, with deaths in the 12 months to November 2021, with a 10.2 per cent lift, after excluding the ACT because of its low start base.

NSW, Tasmania and the Northern Territory were the only jurisdictions to report a decrease in deaths, at 8.6 per cent, 7.9 per cent and 7.9 per cent respectively.

Royal Australasian College of Surgeons national trauma committee chair John Crozier. Picture: Supplied.

Dr Crozier said the draft Nat­ional Road Safety Strategy 2021-30 should cement data deadlines for states and terri­tories to feed road safety back information back to the common­wealth and delegate responsi­bility between different layers of government.

The draft strategy has faced a chorus of criticism from road safety stakeholders and health practitioner groups about its ­failure to include mechanisms to encourage states and territories to improve road ­safety and gen­erate the comprehensive data that is needed to either monitor or manage Australia’s road trauma crisis.

“Death is easy. You’re either dead or you’re not, so that data comes more easily to the commonwealth. But more critically, there are 44,000 of hospitalised each year following a road crash and that data seeps very slowly towards the commonwealth – often four years after the event.” Dr Crozier said.

 

The Australian Automobile Association managing director Michael Bradley said “shambolic” road trauma data collection meant information like location of deaths and number of road injuries was impossible to collate nationally.

“We still struggle to get a nat­ional story told on this and we don’t manage it nationally,” he said.

“At the moment, we’re not even monitoring what’s going on out there and if you’re not monitoring it, no one’s managing it.

“We can tell you how many people died on the roads last year but we can’t tell you how many people were injured, what kind of car accidents they were in, what sorts of drivers there were and what sorts of cars they were ­driving.”

Mr Bradley said a lack of political will allowed the silent epidemic – that in some states has a higher death toll than Covid-19 – had been kept out.

“This is an unfortunate truth. Road safety is an incredibly ugly issue for politicians to deal with because it involves solutions that increase scrutiny and accountability and political expenditure as well as setting targets and politicians taking ownership of these,” he said.