Our road safety academics need to start talking to truckies

The ONLY regional road safety solution Australia’s academics appear to have is to lower speed limits on WA and NT regional roads.

As WA heads towards a road safety summit next week with the premier, the mainstream media has been flooded with calls by such academics (often from the inner city) calling for speed reductions.

This one-dimensional solution by Australia’s road safety academics does not do justice to their intelligence whilst depriving Australia of the multi-factor solutions needed to improve road safety, particularly in the regions.

Examples

What about road funding? No mention of the appalling underfunding of Australia’s regional roads, as The Guardian reported on November 12, 2023:

“Regional Australian roads have become a “dangerous disgrace”, according to a new report that warns they will get worse due to paltry funding that favours cities and forces poorer regional councils to waste repair money erecting signs in tribute to government grants.” 

What about enforcement? Recently driving back from Sydney to Perth, I saw just two police patrol cars over a 4000km trip through three states.
What about driver attitude? One of the most frequent comments from truck drivers is the appalling attitude of drivers. People in various vehicle types who think that they are more important than others on the road and whose driving behaviour is commensurately high risk.
What about alternative travel? What about things like why regional people are forced to drive. Regional families may need to get to a capital city for a medical appointment etc. What options do they have? Regional airfares are prohibitively expensive and limited, as for taking a train or bus well that is not an option in large parts of regional Australia.
There are lots of other “what abouts” that could be added, especially by truck drivers who are the on-road driving professionals in Australia, but rarely if ever consulted by the road safety academics.

National Road Safety Strategy is failing

The National Road Safety Strategy 2021 to 2030 target was to reduce Australia’s annual fatalities by at least 50 per cent and serious injuries by at least 30 per cent by 2030. YET, in the last five years, the national road toll has risen over 20 per cent from 1102 people in FY 19/20 to 1327 FY 23/24. Clearly it is NOT working.

What do the speed limit academics really want? 

The call by road safety academics to lower speeds may or may not have merit. But where do they stop in lowering speeds? Recently Canberra bureaucrats proposed a 40km/h dusk-to-dawn speed limit on some regional highways. Similar proposals to have night time road safety speed limits have also been proposed for regional highways. This poses the question of what is the target speed limit academics want on Australia’s regional roads?

Need to try harder

Our road safety academics need to try harder, as do we all, to find solutions to this national road safety tragedy. For the academics, their first step should be to start consulting with our nation’s truck drivers!

Cam Dumesny is the CEO of the Western Roads Federation.

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