Not too late to win road toll fight

“It’s just horrific. No matter how many times I say it, I find myself sitting there reading victim impact statements in tears because it never ceases to be stark and brutal.”

Judge Geoffrey Chettle’s words to the Shepparton County Court in November, during a hearing into the October 2023 car crash that killed five-year-old Savannah Kemp and Remi, the unborn son of Elodie and Andrew Eldridge, have been true for too many families far too many times. And 2024, sadly, has not been an exception.

We must acknowledge that the number of people who die on our roads remains far too high.Credit: Andrew Quilty

As of midnight on December 26, 279 lives had been lost on Victoria’s roads this year, a welcome, albeit small, decrease from 293 deaths in the corresponding period last year. Victoria suffered the deadliest year on its roads in 15 years in 2023, with 295 people killed. More people are killed annually on the state’s roads than in homicides. Yet, our leaders made a commitment three years ago to halve deaths on our roads by 2030, along with the ambition of zero deaths to be achieved by 2050.

It is not too late to win this fight, but first there must be an acknowledgment that the number of people who die – and sustain horrific injuries – on our roads remains far too high and renewed efforts are needed.

On May 1, a state parliamentary inquiry into the safety of vulnerable road users tabled its final report, containing more than 50 recommendations for the Allan government’s attention. The government is required to give a response to such a report within six months. That deadline passed in November and the economy and infrastructure committee, which ran the inquiry, is still waiting.

The report’s main findings are not surprising. For years now we’ve been told that a vital part of reducing road deaths is lowering our speed limits – which are high by international standards – on winding country roads and suburban rat runs. The report urges the Department of Transport and Planning to promote the benefits of slower-speed zones and to make it easier for councils to set lower speed limits.

As Michael Fitzharris, associate professor at the Monash University Accident Research Centre, said when discussing regional road accidents about this time last year: “If you don’t have physical separation between oncoming traffic, and trees, the road should not be 100km/h … it’s more cost-effective for us to match the speed limit to the environment.”

Sometimes we do have to change “the environment”, and the report also points to the importance of better infrastructure, from the location of pedestrian crossings to road treatments in regional areas, which are still where most road deaths happen.

One growing challenge is the condition of our roads. Age transport reporter Patrick Hatch has written about their declining state as changes in our climate and increasing reliance on trucks for freight create greater risk of potholes and cracking in road surfaces.

The Allan government’s announcement in October of a $964 million program of repairs, and another $6.6 billion in investment over 10 years, is an answer to years of underfunding in this area.

But we also need to look at what we use roads for. As Scott Elaurant, chair of Engineers Australia’s Transport Australia Society, has said: “Unless someone’s willing to make a much more substantial investment in our rail freight network … the potholes aren’t going away.”

We cannot simply maintain the status quo; there needs to be a continual effort to improve the situation. It was worrying to see the state government funnelling billions of dollars from the Transport Accident Commission to deal with debts run up in other areas of the budget. “Every dollar that’s taken … is a dollar that cannot be spent on road safety,” road safety engineer Rob Morgan said.

Education on road use is another area highlighted in the parliamentary inquiry’s report, particularly in the digital media area, where our young people – the road users of tomorrow – spend much of their time. It is here that drivers need more education about road use relating to bike and motorcycle riders, whose representation in road accident statistics is growing.

While we can debate emphasis and funding of these approaches, the state government must buy into them and give them a platform. Taking money from the TAC to spend in other areas is lamentable; not showing up with a response to the parliamentary committee’s work is disappointing.

While the government response is now expected to be tabled in the new year, the government says it is already making inroads on some of the inquiry’s recommendations, this week announcing an extra “$350 million life-saving road safety infrastructure”.

We cannot allow ourselves to fall back into the mindset of a “road toll” - a price we simply have to pay to get around this country of vast distances and inconsistent public transport. That cannot be allowed to happen, for the sake of families across this state.

Last week, Gabrielle Williams was handed the transport infrastructure portfolio and Ben Carroll the TAC portfolio. We hope that the cabinet reshuffle will also mean greater focus on these priorities.

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