Deadly delay in action on road safety
The co-chairs of a blueprint to prevent road crash deaths say federal government inaction is putting lives on the line.
Australia’s leading road trauma experts, picked by the Coalition as co-chairs of an inquiry to prevent road crash deaths, say the federal government is putting lives on the line by ignoring their blueprint to fix the National Road Safety Strategy.
Trauma surgeon John Crozier and Centre for Automotive Safety Research head Jeremy Woolley delivered their report on reviving the road safety plan to Transport Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack more than six months ago. They said they were disappointed by the government’s inaction, as 100 people are killed on the nation’s roads every month.
Dr Crozier, a trauma surgeon at Sydney’s Liverpool Hospital, said the delay “is killing us”.
“Each day I see the constant admissions to our major hospitals; that constant drip of seriously injured victims following road injury,” he said.
The pair has gone public in a new campaign for the Australian Automobile Association, demanding immediate action to make Australian roads safer.
The 2011 National Road Safety Strategy committed the commonwealth and all states and territories to a 30 per cent reduction in the road toll by 2020, and a 30 per cent reduction in serious injuries as a result of road crashes. The 2018 road toll came in at 1277, down by 10 per cent or 131 fatalities since 2011. There is still no official count of serious road trauma injuries.
In their review of the strategy, delivered to the government in September, Dr Crozier and Professor Woolley recommended $3 billion be ploughed into improving road safety each year, a national road safety office be set up, and the rapid rollout of vehicle safety technology.
At a Senate estimates hearing last month, government officials said they had “a great deal of respect” for the inquiry co-chairs, and the government’s response to their report was “a work in progress”.
Mr McCormack said the government had established a road safety taskforce and a governance review, and COAG agreed in November 2018 on a plan to implement the report.
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