Lessons learned through the COVID pandemic should be applied to the so-called "silent epidemic" of road trauma to help drive down Australia's road toll over the next decade.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The chair of the trauma committee at the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, Dr John Crozier, said that the pandemic had "galvanised" the national response and generated a much greater, more regular interaction between the jurisdictions and the Commonwealth.
This co-operation, in turn, has generated nationally consistent data on COVID-related hospitalisations, cases, tests and deaths, and a focused response across the country.
"We have proved we can do this with our COVID response; why can't we approach road trauma with the same national cohesion and urgency?," Dr Crozier said.
"We have tens of thousands of people hospitalised across the country every year as a result of road trauma but we still don't have nationally consistent data which gives us a clear and concise picture of this silent epidemic.
"And what we know for certain is: good data informs good policy."
A key policy plank, expected to span a full decade, was rolled out last week as thousands of Australians hit the road over the Christmas-new year period.
The latest National Road Safety Strategy 2021-30 is aiming for a 50 per cent reduction in road deaths and a 30 per cent reduction in serious injuries.
The strategy follows on from a lengthy period of public consultation by the joint select committee on road safety, chaired by former federal transport minister and Nationals MP Darren Chester.
The new document adopts what is described as a "social model" approach, identifying road safety as a shared responsibility "by all parts of society including the logistics and transport, health and social services sectors, law enforcement, education and justice, planning and industry".
Road trauma carries a $30 billion annual cost to the national economy. By comparison, in the May federal budget, $2.2 billion was pledged to road safety including $1 billion for the road safety program and $1 billion for the Local Roads and Community Infrastructure program.
Serious injuries on our roads are increasing, and have been doing so at a rate of 3.3 per cent every year since 2013.
The federal government's attempt to peg back the toll and the trauma during its first national strategy, which ended in 2020 with road deaths 9 per cent higher the baseline target, was judged widely by road safety experts as an "implementation failure".
Identified as a key omission from the document was the importance of local government upskilling and capacity building to deliver safer regional and country roads, where a significantly higher proportion of accidents - often at higher speeds - occur.
READ MORE:
Local governments are responsible for regional road maintenance but are inevitably stretched in funds and resources to perform the job, particularly over road networks which span thousands of kilometres.
One of Australia's foremost road safety experts who reviewed the previous decade's strategy, Dr Jeremy Woolley, has advocated for several contentious changes including risk profiling roads around the country "so that we can compare and communicate the transformation of the road network".
Dr Crozier agreed with this approach. He believes that roads should be star-rated like vehicles, with the higher the star rating, the safer the road.