Road Safety: Past, Present and Future, by Ken Smith, FACRS

Road Safety Overview

ROAD SAFETY: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

By: Ken Smith, Fellow of the Australian College of Road Safety

(This paper was originally presented as a Keynote Address at the Australian Institute of Traffic Planning and Management’s ‘The Travel Bug’ conference at the Gold Coast, Queensland, 8 June, 2000. Drive and Stay Alive, Inc., is grateful to Ken Smith for his permission to reproduce it here.)

ABSTRACT

It is by now generally well known that Australia’s road safety performance is up with world’s best practice. Efforts are concentrated on maintaining the momentum including, for the first time, setting national goals for road trauma reduction and developing strategies to this end. There is considerable effort to harmonise with international standards in order to minimise differences of practice and understanding.

This was not always the case. The development of road safety knowledge and improvement in standards, practices, public acceptance of safety and improvement in performance in Australia has an interesting history, part of which is briefly sketched in this paper. Some significant developmental landmarks in regulation, vehicle safety and other areas are outlined.

(The author gratefully acknowledges the contributions of Dr Jennifer Clark of the University of New England and Mr Dennis O’Leary of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau who read and made valuable suggestions on the paper. Remaining errors and omissions, however are the sole responsibility of the author)

Papers by Ken Smith

Creating Safer New Drivers

Novice Driver Licensing in Australia -- 2004

Road Safety: Past, Present and Future

1.0 INTRODUCTION

In September 1972 the Expert Group on Road Safety reported to the Commonwealth Minister for Shipping and Transport, the Hon Peter Nixon MP, that

“Road accidents are rarely caused by a single factor. They represent failures in the operation of the interacting components of a large and complicated transport system involving the vehicle, the road environment, the road user and his social environment.” ⁽¹⁾

This report, the end of almost two years’ work by a team of experts appointed by the Federal Government, was a watershed in more ways than one. Almost three quarters of the way through the century of the automobile, this was probably the first occasion on which a national body had so aptly identified a way of looking at road trauma that had so far largely eluded the nation. Indeed in the same year the Expert Group was commissioned its initial Chairman, Sir James Darling, in his former position as head of the Australian Road Safety Council had admitted failure to make any headway ⁽²⁾.

Revelations such as that of the Expert Group do not come unheralded and unsought. It was only possible because it was preceded by a growing stream of increasingly focussed scientific assessment of the problem, itself the product of a more science-focussed view of the world ⁽²⁾. Institutions such as the NSW Government’s Traffic Accident Research Unit, created by the NSW Government in 1969, had already done valuable work that went far beyond prevailing views.

2.0 EARLY IDEAS

This implies, of course that the foregoing situation was very different. Jennifer Clark ⁽²⁾, in an excellent account of efforts to improve road safety from the earliest days of the motor car in Australia, demonstrates that for most of the century to that point, efforts to deal with road safety were largely moralistic (“Understanding of safe road behaviour was linked very closely with concepts of courtesy, manners and gentlemanly behaviour” ibid, p.4) or “largely operated from a combination of fervour and assumption” (p.11). This is far from surprising, given two things: firstly, the early view of the motor car and its operator as a privileged and often inimical competitor to the horse and cart (and that this took place in the tremendous social and cultural upheavals of the first quarter of the century should not be forgotten), and prevailing views on human behaviour and interaction generally.

In 1971 Michael Henderson was able to note that the general concept that “human beings fail because of some undesirable human behaviour and that this behaviour can be modified in ways which are similar to those employed with the aim of modifying criminal behaviour – that is, the use of deterrence and punishment . . . is now open to serious question” ⁽³⁾. Henderson was able to go on and say, probably on one of the earliest occasions on which the thought was articulated “The key to control of the [road trauma] disease, therefore, lies in modification of all aspects of the system [the vehicle, the energy release in collisions and the road environment] in the direction of safety. Control of human behaviour and human performance . . . is neither the only aspect nor, perhaps, even the most important aspect of traffic safety” (ibid, p.3). To this point we will return.

However in the beginning this was very far from being understood. It is hardly surprising that there was such a confused and even helpless attitude. From their earliest days motor cars exhibited performance capabilities far beyond those of the horse, and presented new problems. Carl Benz, whose invention started it all, thought that no more than a million people in all the world would be able to drive a motor car (reference unknown). The first steam car was on Melbourne roads in 1896, and the first petrol cars were on the roads a year later ⁽²⁾. As well as privileged and wealthy, operators of motor cars were likely to be seen as reckless and uncaring of the needs of an unready community, and it is probably true that they were occasionally impatient of whatever got in the way of previously unimagined aspirations of mobility. Kenneth Grahame’s Toad may be only a small step into caricature ⁽⁴⁾.

Deaths and injuries accompanied motorisation. It is not known when the first motor car casualty occurred in Australia, but in 1895, when there were only four petrol engined cars in the USA, the only two in St Louis managed to collide, injuring the drivers of both ⁽³⁾. In Australia in 1925, when records commenced, there were about 700 deaths for 306,000 registered vehicles, representing about 12 deaths per 100,000 population. From there the rate rose steadily, broken only by the Depression and World War II, to its all time high of 3,798 fatalities and 30.4 deaths per 100,000 population in 1970 ⁽⁵⁾. This, it will be recalled, was the year in which the Federal Government commissioned the Expert Group on Road Safety to inquire into and identify the fundamental causes of road accidents.

In 1999 the national total stood at 1759, approaching half that of 30 years ago. This figure, the way in which it was achieved and the way ahead, probably represent the most interesting part of the story.

3.0 TURNING IT AROUND

It has been mentioned that it was only with the commencement of understanding of the problem in scientific terms and the search for solutions in those terms that it became possible to make advances ^{(2,
3)}. Although slow to commence, these advances rapidly gained momentum. Many measures, especially vehicle based countermeasures, take time to take effect as, for example, new vehicles equipped with new safety features penetrate the market. Others, such as drink driving countermeasures, have an immediate impact. This section will discuss some highlight issues

3.1 ROADS

The 1970s saw the commencement of a great era of road construction. Although Commonwealth funding had been provided to the States for roads for many years (the Commonwealth Aid Roads Program and its predecessors, from 1923 ^[6]), the 1970s saw the introduction of the National Roads Program under which the Commonwealth took financial responsibility for construction and maintenance of a declared national highways system, and provided considerable financial assistance to the States and Territories for other roads. The activist approach adopted by the Commonwealth, under which Commonwealth approval was required not only for road construction programs but individual projects on which Commonwealth funds were to be spent, was not always appreciated by the States. Nevertheless these three decades have seen, for example, duplication of most of the Hume Highway between Sydney and Melbourne and the rebuilding and upgrading of a vast number of roads across Australia, many of which, as late as the seventies, had remained unsealed (the Eyre Highway across the Nullarbor, for example).

Although the Commonwealth funding program changed in scope over time, with less direct Commonwealth control as time went on, it did not lessen and in fact was supplemented in the 1980s by the Australian Bicentennial Road Development Fund (ABRD) of $2,500 million over five years. This program, funded not out of consolidated revenue but from a hypothecated 2.5c/litre on petrol and diesel fuel, aimed to ‘fill the gaps’ and complete a major upgrading of the nation’s road systems in time for its Bicentennial in 1988. This program was followed by the Australian Land Transport Development Program, similarly funded by a levy, which also provided funding for road and rail research, road safety, promotion and research, and some mainline upgrading ⁽⁶⁾.

Also in the seventies and early eighties there were programs of financial assistance to the States for transport planning and development, and for improvement and upgrading of urban public transport.

The primary focus of all these programs was always economic, rather than safety. The economic benefits of an efficient and high standard transport system are very high. Major upgrading works such as the redevelopment and duplication of the Hume Highway to near freeway standard have as their primary focus improving the ease of travel, reducing travel times and wear and tear. However, by also providing high pavement standards, multiple lanes and therefore essentially continuous overtaking opportunities, by separating opposing traffic and limiting access, reducing grades and increasing curve radii, such roads bring with them a vast increase in safety.

Major upgrading works are only part of the story, however, since high standard dual carriageway routes like the Hume Highway and the urban freeway development that has been a characteristic of the eighties and nineties represent only a small proportion of the national road system. The national highway network, for example is 18,400 km long and about 2.3% of the 800,000km road network. There are about 12,200 km of urban arterial roads, which are about 1.5% of the total and only a small proportion of which are divided or freeway standard ⁽⁷⁾. Smaller scale but equally important work in safety terms includes wider pavements, better and consistent line marking, wider shoulders and more forgiving or protected roadside furniture, grade and curve realignment and overtaking lanes. All these are important safety features. All played a significant if less easily observed part in reducing road trauma over the past three decades. In the 1980s there was useful research on improving the access and amenity of the urban transport system, emphasising the safe interaction of road transport, pedestrians and unprotected road users. This area in particular presents further challenges.

3.2 Road safety improvements

At this point it is useful to consider the nature of some of the advances that took place in this era, and to attempt to analyse the reasons for the improvement that took place. It will not be possible to touch on more than a few of the countermeasures implemented in this period, but those selected may be regarded as benchmarks.

3.2.1 Seat Belts

The first seat belt arrangement was patented by a Frenchman in 1903 ⁽⁸⁾. However it was in 1954 that researchers at the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratories in the US identified the danger of ejection from motor vehicles, and in September 1960 a Select Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament recommended that

“The motor trade should install seat belts of an approved standard in all motor vehicles. Road safety authorities should give publicity to the advantages of wearing seat belts” ⁽⁸⁾.

In the early 1960s the Standards Association of Australia began to develop standards for seat belts and anchorages, and these were eventually incorporated in Australian Design Rules 4 and 5 and approved in 1967 as two of the first five Australian Design Rules. They came into effect on 1 January 1969.

Seat belts had been on sale and available for fitting in cars from the 1950s ⁽⁸⁾, but there was little understanding of the need for restraint and almost all fitting in cars was voluntary and after market. In many cases it was government and private fleets that took the lead and fitted belts to their vehicles. One of the earliest and certainly the best known example is the Snowy Mountains Authority, which not only fitted belts in heavy machinery as well as road vehicles, but required its staff to wear them and provided educational and publicity material to encourage them to do so. A report on this experience and a study based on police reports of 40,000 casualty crashes in Victoria in 1963 provided the first hard Australian evidence of the benefits of seat belt wearing. These two studies provided a strong foundation for policy and legislative action.

Even if fitted, belts must be worn to be effective. Milne reports that in 1964 the South Australian Road Traffic Board reported a 64% wearing rate for drivers, where belts were fitted, and in the same year in Victoria 64% of drivers of passenger cars and derivatives involved in casualty crashes were wearing belts, where fitted. Oddly, the wearing rate declined over the rest of the decade to as low as 27% in South Australia in 1970.

That year was the watershed. It will be recalled that 1970 was Australia’s worst year for road deaths. Following recommendations of a Parliamentary Committee, Victoria made seat belt wearing compulsory from the beginning of 1971. Similar legislation in New South Wales came into effect in October of that year. Other States followed and by 1972 compulsory wearing followed throughout Australia.

There was an immediate effect. Milne reports that the reduction in occupant fatalities from the expected trend was of the order of 15-20%; Heiman ⁽⁹⁾ reports a reduction in Victoria of 18% over the expected trend by the end of 1971 and 26% by 1975. Milne mentions a flow-on in belt wearing rates in Sydney and South Australia following Victoria’s compulsory wearing legislation.

Further improvements followed. Compulsory fitting of belts in back seats came in 1971, but mandatory locking retractors, although required in front seats from 1976 (but fitted in many vehicles before that) were not required in rear seats before 1984 (although again, some manufacturers were fitting them from the late 1970s). Child restraint anchorages in the rear seats were mandatory from 1976.

Recent improvements have included seat belt pretensioners and webbing clamps to further improve restraint effectiveness in a crash. A logical development, these devices overcome one deficiency of the locking retractor belt: the propensity of this belt to allow ‘spool out’ and some forward movement before the retractor locks, and hence some head or upper body impact with the front of the passenger compartment.

Heiman reports seat belt wearing rates up to 90% by the mid 1980s. Makeham ⁽¹⁰⁾ reported rates of 95% and up to 98% in some regions of Australia in the front seat, and up to 80% in the rear. These rates are now as high as anywhere in the world. If ever there were a ‘silver bullet’ in road safety, seat belts would have to be one of them.

3.2.2 Alcohol

A second road safety silver bullet is undoubtedly the advance in combating drink driving. Australia has one of the highest per capita alcohol consumption rates in the world. The Expert Group on Road Safety in 1972 reported that 53% of drivers killed in Queensland, (date not given but probably during the late 1960s), had a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) in excess of 0.05gm/100ml; the figure was 71% for single vehicle crashes. There is no reason to believe that the national figures were much different. FORS ⁽¹¹⁾ reported that in 1981 the national figure was 44%, but by 1997 this had dropped to 28% (no later national figure is available, but in some jurisdictions the figure is probably now 25% or below).

Restraining alcohol and road use has a more difficult history than seat belt wearing, although the end result has been easily as spectacular. The great problem was a culture that valued the manly ability to hold one’s liquor, and although driving under the influence had been an offence since the 1920s ⁽²⁾ the existence of legal sanctions could make little headway against popular culture. Attempts to deal with the problem were probably hindered by the lack of a statistical database to show the extent of the problem: “Fundamental to the study of any problem, and to the determination of measures designed to combat it, is the analysis of adequate data” ⁽³⁾. Probably one of the first measures that allowed any real headway was the abandonment of sobriety testing, highly subjective as it was, for per se alcohol levels in the bloodstream. It had already been determined that the relationship between blood alcohol concentration and risk of crashing could be measured, and it was very clear that that risk rose rapidly at levels above 0.05. What was also determined once measurement began to be used was that the BACs of drivers involved in crashes were far higher than the levels that one might expect to find in drinking persons in the community ^{(1, 3)}. This suggested a problem with alcohol use more than a problem with drinking and driving.

At the time the Expert Group reported the legal BAC in all jurisdictions was 0.08, except Victoria at 0.05. Although ‘breathalyser’ use had accompanied the use of per se limits as the legal threshold there were legal impediments to its widespread use: police had to have good reason to require a person to submit to a breath test. Therefore, although it is unlikely that this was the first time the measure had been suggested, the Expert Group’s recommendation to the Commonwealth Minister for random breath testing and hospital blood tests for killed and injured drivers represented a breakthrough.

That it took another decade before the first two jurisdictions legislated to allow police to stop any person, any time and require them to submit to a breath test is probably testimony to the political courage necessary. Victoria did so in 1982 and New South Wales followed, introducing RBT as a temporary measure to counter the expected Christmas road toll on 17 December. It was never lifted.

Although several other jurisdictions followed, and over the same period all except WA, the ACT and the NT had reduced the legal minimum BAC level from 0.08 to 0.05, it was not until the advent of the carrot and stick approach of the 10 Point National Road Safety Package of 1990 (Attachment A) and the accompanying Black Spots Program that these jurisdictions somewhat reluctantly, and the last a good deal later than advocates wished, fell into line.

Nevertheless the improvement was immediate and long lasting. Despite the fears of the legislatures public support for random breath testing, thanks to intensive public education on the relationship between alcohol and road trauma, was high, with some 87% of persons in a national community attitude survey in 1996 agreeing strongly with random breath testing ⁽¹²⁾.

However, with some 25 to 30% or more of drivers and riders killed still having BAC levels over 0.05, there was, and still is, room for improvement.

3.2.3 Publicity and enforcement

Critical to the success of both of these measures, and indeed of all efforts to improve public awareness of road safety issues and compliance with legal measures, was sophisticated and carefully targeted publicity and enforcement. Previously, road safety publicity probably had little educational content and was little more than sloganeering ⁽²⁾. Enforcement of road rules and police preventative activity generally was probably under-resourced and less than thorough or targetted. The application of scientific analysis to vehicle safety issues has been mentioned; this was also applied to education and enforcement through the tools of the behavioural scientist and the communicator.

The introduction of random breath testing, itself founded on a developed theory of general and specific deterrence, was accompanied by a massive amount of publicity about the dangers and consequences of drinking and driving, the likelihood of being caught, the social responsibility of not letting a friend drive after drinking, and so on. Cue cards showing how many ‘standard drinks’ would raise blood alcohol concentration to and beyond legal limits, were produced and distributed by the millions. This activity was carefully targeted as to age and social group, with carefully tailored messages, to gain the maximum impact.

These principles of education and publicity were applied to speeding, driver fatigue, novice drivers, motorcycle safety, seat belt wearing, correct use of child restraints, and a host of others. Without the massive publicity and education campaigns accompanying the introduction of measures and enforcement of on-road behaviour, it is unlikely that many of the measures introduced from the 1970s, and especially during the 1980s and 1990s, could have had the impact they did.

3.2.4 Vehicle Safety

The earliest legislation regarding motor vehicles probably had more to do with regulating safe operation than the safety of the vehicle itself ⁽¹⁾. From about the 1940s research into car safety began in earnest in the US, and in Australia the newly formed Australian Transport Advisory Council (ATAC) established the Australian Motor Vehicle Standards Committee (AMVSC) to define recommended national standards for the construction, equipment and performance of all road vehicles ⁽⁸⁾. Recommendations of the Committee adopted by ATAC became Draft Regulations and as Australian Design Rules were eventually incorporated as requirements for new vehicles through the State and Territory vehicle registration requirements. It was not until the advent of the Commonwealth Motor Vehicle Standards Act in 1989 that the ADRs had legal force in their own right.

In later years considerable attention was devoted in the development of new ADRs to a policy of international harmonisation: that where possible standards adopted for vehicles on the Australian market should reflect international standards and best practice, so as to facilitate import and export of vehicles and to reduce costs of compliance with Australian standards. Nevertheless there were some areas where Australia did go it alone, especially in relation to head restraints and, for a time, seat belts. The result of this is that Australian produced cars have on the whole been right up with, and sometimes have exemplified, best practice.

Even so it was probably not until about 1989 that Australia began to push the envelope. In that year FORS commissioned the new Monash University Accident Research Centre to undertake a review of the injuries sustained by people in the front seat of cars involved in frontal crashes ⁽¹³⁾. This work, supplemented by a number of follow-up studies (eg on side impact injuries [CR 134], lower limb injuries [CR 137], four wheel drives, utilities and panel vans [CR150]) was probably the first to link vehicle damage with injuries sustained and to carefully examine the injury producing mechanisms. It was this work, with a follow-up economic analysis of occupant protection measures ⁽¹⁴⁾ that led to the frontal occupant protection Design Rule which most vehicle manufacturers and distributors have met with the installation of frontal air bags.

The air bag itself has an interesting story. Air bags had been available in passenger cars in the US for over a decade as a ‘passive restraint’, and there had been some criticism that Australia had not adopted this advanced safety measure. It was not appreciated however that air bags and ‘active’ seat belts were introduced in the US in response to poor seat belt wearing rates and the inability of legislators to pass seat belt wearing laws with teeth. In fact because of the seat belt systems already in use in Australia and high wearing rates, our level of occupant protection was certainly better than in the US, and much more so for side impacts where seat belts offered some protection and air bags virtually none.

The response of manufacturers and distributors of cars in Australia was to set up the air bag as a supplementary restraint, assuming that occupants would be wearing seat belts. This allowed it to be smaller and less aggressive than air bags in cars in the US, and deployed later in the crash sequence. Although the deployment of an air bag is necessarily a violent event, continuing research shows that there have been no deaths or serious injuries from air bag deployment in Australia, such as has been reported in the US.

The next generation of air bags, ‘smart’ versions that sense crash severity and deploy with only the amount of force necessary and only if the seat is occupied, is under development. For at least the past two years some Australian cars have been equipped with set belt pre-tensioners and webbing clamps to further enhance occupant protection.

3.2.5 Policy

To discern the next major development it is necessary to back track a little in time. Reference was made earlier to the Federal Government’s Road Safety Package and the accompanying Black Spots Program of 1990, which provided $270 million to the States over three years. The Road Safety Package comprised ten known and proven best practice safety measures (see Attachment A), which if applied by the States and Territories had the potential to make a significant improvement to a fatality rate that was running the risk of plateauing, even if that point had not yet been reached. However it was clear from the debate that accompanied the attempts to implement the program and have the States and Territories fall into line that several were being pushed rather than wholeheartedly supporting the safety improvements, and that something better than the ‘funding/incentive approach’ was needed to lock in the gains made and plan for further reductions ⁽¹⁵⁾.

That something was the first National Road Safety Strategy, endorsed by the Australian Transport Council in 1992. It was the outcome of broadly based discussions with States, Territories, police, health professionals, industry, motoring associations and special interest groups. It obtained support and importantly, commitment, and for the first time linked with health interests and dealt with road safety as a public health issue ⁽¹⁵⁾.

Also for the first time, the Strategy set a target. Although some countries in Europe had set road safety targets, Australia had resisted doing so. Now we set ourselves the target of reducing road deaths to 10 per 100,000 population by 2001 with commensurate reductions in serious injuries. At first sight that appears quite modest against the 1991 figure of 12.2. But there were concerns that with the economy beginning to turn around we might be hard pressed to do more than hold our ground, and contemporary projections suggested a population increase of 18 percent and a possible 25 per cent increase in road travel ⁽¹⁵⁾.

The Strategy set Action Plans, but did not of itself commit the States and Territories to a blueprint. Instead it provided a framework and principles for continuing strategic development, and hinged on cooperative planning between all partners committed to it.

The initial Action Plan was followed by a second in 1996, which had added to it for the first time a Rural and Remote Area Action Plan. Also in 1997, Transport Ministers agreed to a new national target of 8/100,000 by 2005. In that year, unfortunately the last for which we have a figure, Australia’s road fatality rate was 9.7/100,000.

3.3 The future: Strategy

Earlier this year the Government published the new Draft National Road Safety Strategy 2000 on the web site of the Department of Transport and Regional Services⁽¹⁶⁾. That strategy aims to halve the number of road fatalities and serious injuries from the level of 1999 by 2010.

This perhaps is the most ambitious target yet. But it is not the target that is important in this case: it is the future-based thinking that underlies it. The key statement is the primary objective of the strategy: No level of road trauma should be accepted as inevitable.

3.3.1 A New Approach

To see how we have come to this it is again necessary to backtrack a few years. The most recent, 1996 Road Safety Action Plan had a series of targets: rural and remote area road safety, fatigue, more enforcement resources, speed management, alcohol and drugs, vehicle standards and cost effective safety technology, to pick a few out of the list. But that Action Plan broke no new ground and did little more than reflect a fairly common view at the time, one which this writer expressed often enough:

There are no more silver bullets.

Improvements on our current level of safety will be progressively more costly and harder to achieve.

We will have to spend more and more, probably to get progressively less out of each dollar spent.

While these were not exactly a counsel of despair they did not give a very optimistic outlook.

It has to be said that this was in the context of some fairly severe challenges. Population and road travel projections have already been mentioned. In addition

· Vehicle ownership, already very high by world standards, was expected to continue to grow

· Traffic congestion in the cities was likely to continue and get worse

· The population is aging, and there are signs that older road users may be going to take an increasing share of total deaths and injuries, while at the same time older people are more active and more mobile than, say, a generation ago.

To these one can add

· A growing economy, which always puts pressure on safety

· Some emerging problems, such as a growing importance in road crashes of the role of women, and especially younger women ⁽¹⁷⁾.

However some very different ideas were beginning to be expressed at this time, and it is useful to explore these a little. These ideas were given some airing in an address by the then Director of FORS to the Manitoba Road Safety Council ⁽¹⁵⁾ and in a talk this writer gave as a guest lecturer at the Republic of Korea Traffic Science Institute late in 1997 ⁽¹⁸⁾. To a large degree these concepts have formed the basis for the present Draft National Road Safety Strategy.

The encapsulating idea, embodying a more hopeful and optimistic proposition, is very strongly reflected in the present strategy, that

As a community we can have any level of road safety that we are prepared to pay for.

In essence what that means is that the community is prepared to accept the level of road trauma that is dictated by the resources it puts into it. In other words, what price do we put on lives?

Of course it does not mean just money. It means a political and social commitment to direct resources to where they are needed. It means hard-headed political decisions based on full awareness of the issues and costs. This is not the first time: exactly such will was needed on the part of the first two Australian jurisdictions to legislate for random breath testing.

Here follow a few lead ideas and related points:

· · We have not yet seen the full benefit of existing measures

Earlier, this paper canvassed just three of the areas of major action and improvement in the last thirty years or so. To cover more would have been beyond the scope of this paper, even though some of the areas not examined have been ones of personal involvement. The following examples will serve to illustrate the trend in thinking that has occurred over the past three years or so.

Speed management: A good deal of attention has been paid in recent years to speed management, covering speed zoning and means of managing vehicle speeds.

* One theme is the benefits of a 50 km/h general urban speed limit, on which the Australian College of Road Safety, AITPM and three other organisations earlier this year wrote to all Australian Transport Ministers urging uniform adoption. Reducing speeds in local streets by 10 km/h has been estimated to reduce casualties by 6%

* There is strong and growing evidence that quite small reductions in travel speeds could have a big safety impact ⁽¹⁹⁾, especially at speeds above 60 km/h. This is because stopping distance increases exponentially with each 5 km/h increase in speed.

Alcohol: there is scope for

* More strategic targeting of random breath testing: if there is a point of diminishing returns from increasing random breath testing, that point has not yet been reached ⁽²⁰⁾

* There is room for better alignment of penalties with the severity of the offence

* More can be done to target recidivist drink drivers

* Drunken pedestrians continue to represent a serious problem

Seat belts: We have 95-98% wearing rates.

* Almost everyone wears a seat belt – except those most likely to be involved in a crash

* Nearly two in five occupant fatalities are still unbelted ⁽²¹⁾: if the person has been drinking, the rate is even higher.

· · It is too easy to assume we have tried everything that is worth doing

There is a lot that we do not yet know. Most of the gains in road safety that have been made to date have come from implementing measures that would have been considered totally impractical, unrealistic or politically impossible only a few short years ago

* 0.05 and random breath testing

* the levels of seat belt wearing we now have

* occupant protection at the level we now have

There are still a few heavy contributors to road trauma in which significant improvements have yet to be made. These include

* fatigue

* recidivist drink drivers, particularly problem drinkers, and drunken pedestrians

* driver performance generally.

Driver performance is an area in which there has been little official action, and there are many who argue that Australian driver skills are inadequate (eg Peter Mackay in the Sydney Morning Herald on almost any Saturday). It is also frequently considered, often by the same people, that drivers are inadequately trained and that better training, either initial training of novices or post-licence improvement or remedial training, will make for better drivers and fewer crashes.

It is true that such factors as speed, drink driving and failure to observe traffic signals are prominent as causes and contributors to crashes, but it does not follow that this is necessarily a training or a skill issue. It is the view of this writer that the root of many crashes is error, or inattention, or failure to adequately allow for the behaviour of others, or inability to deal adequately with complex driving situations. Except the last, these are more motivation than skill issues and probably none are very amenable to training. Driving is a largely unsupervised, self-paced task, in which moreover there is a good deal of ego and self image. It is likely that electronics and intelligent transport systems, which have so far been neglected in this paper, have something to offer in this area: proximity warnings, transponders and active braking systems, for example.

· · Research has more to tell us

This represents a very personal view. It is said that research is the driver of the road safety bus, and that an accurate, comprehensive statistical database provides the road map. In the last two decades FORS has funded and published some research that is first class by any standard. The young driver research program undertaken by MUARC in the early 1990s, with which this writer was associated as FORS project officer ⁽²²⁾ has provided the intellectual underpinning of all the work in Australia on improving the preparation and reducing the vulnerability of novice drivers, including the ACT’s innovative Road Ready program. There is a vast amount more, of which the fatigue research by Feyer and Williamson and their colleagues, and the occupant protection research by MUARC are but a part. Australia has done some top class collaborative work with other countries on occupant protection, such as the development of a side impact standard. The FORS Fatality File and Serious Injury File are highly useful analytical databases and are improving all the time.

It is most important that the momentum be maintained. Good research does not come cheap, but it also pays. It does not matter that a great amount of that research does not appear to push the envelope or serve particular ends, although it may, and in FORS’ case a great deal of it has. The idea that you only do or fund research that will solve a particular problem or answer a policy question is inadequate, short sighted and ultimately self-defeating. It is essential to have the knowledge base from which winning ideas and, importantly, policy directions can come. It is of great importance to the future that an adequate and assured research budget, an adequate team of sufficiently skilled research managers, and management backup, be maintained. A fifty percent reduction in road trauma by 2010 will need further research, both visionary and exploratory as well as very carefully targeted, problem solving research. This will be an even greater imperative for the targets that will follow.

Except for the matter of research, these concepts and others are incorporated in the Road Safety Strategy referred to. But of all the themes embodied in it the most important remains that of the objective of that Strategy: No level of road trauma should be accepted as inevitable.

This leads us into the most radical expression so far of a vision for road safety for the future. Although the draft National Road Safety Strategy does not go as far as that, many of the principles are parallel.

3.4 Even More Future: Vision Zero

Claes Tingvall, the new head of the Monash University Accident Research Centre, brought one significant thing with him from Sweden. Sweden has embraced Vision Zero: “a philosophy of road safety that eventually no one will be killed or seriously injured within the road transport system” ⁽²³⁾. The concept is outlined in Tingvall’s paper, reproduced on the Monash University web site. Readers should refer to the paper, but some of the main concepts are:

· Vision Zero changes the emphasis in responsibility for road traffic safety from the road user to sharing it between the system designers and the road users

- the system designers are ultimately responsible for the design, operation and use of the road transport system, and thereby responsible for the level of safety of the system

· Mobility should follow from safety and not be obtained at the expense of safety

- since mobility and safety cannot be traded against each other (as happens now) mobility becomes a function of safety and not vice versa

· No foreseeable crash should be more severe than the tolerance of the human in order not to receive an injury that causes a long term health loss

- either the harmful element must be eliminated, or it must not be beyond human tolerance

- to keep exposure under the threshold, either crashes must be eliminated, or the ability to withstand forces increased

· Some constraints are built in, such as an assumption that occupants are restrained

· The system is not built to minimise crashes as such, but to eliminate those that exceed human tolerance (eg roundabouts do not necessarily reduce crashes, but they do eliminate the very severe opposing and right turn crashes).

There is more, especially some interesting thoughts on speed management, but the intent is clear. But to see the force of it, it is useful to return to 1971. At that time Henderson contended:

“The key to control of the [road trauma] disease . . . lies in modification of all aspects of the system [the vehicle, the energy release in collisions and the road environment] in the direction of safety. Control of human behaviour and human performance . . . is neither the only aspect nor, perhaps, even the most important aspect of traffic safety” ⁽³⁾. This is nicely illustrated by the fact that of the three measures having a major impact on trauma discussed earlier, two deal with the vehicle. Road and road environment treatments, also mentioned earlier, are perhaps the example of bypassing human behaviour and modifying the consequences of error, rather than attempting to correct the erroneous behaviour.

Vision Zero embodies precisely this principle, as also do very directly some of the elements of the National Road Safety Strategy (using new technology to reduce human error; improving vehicle compatibility and occupant protection; improving the safety of roads). It is possible also to cite road design, anti-lock brakes, active suspension and a host of electronic-based vehicle control measures now in use or in the pipeline.

This is not a defeatist strategy, far from it. Major elements of road safety strategies in the past, at present and in the future require human behaviour to be modified. Drink driving and speed management are both important elements, as also are pedestrian behaviour, novice driver education strategies and a host of others. All are embodied in the National Road Safety Strategy, and it is likely that all will continue to have their share in the decades ahead. But what characterises these behaviour issues (except novice driver preparation strategies which are in a special class, and only some of which involve behaviour modification) is that they are visible and amenable to deterrence and enforcement action, in a way that driver performance issues are not.

4.0 Conclusion

This paper has canvassed thought on reducing road trauma from the earliest days of homilies appealing to a person’s better nature through almost helplessness and despair, through some very bold political and social initiatives, to a vision of the future in which no one will be killed or seriously injured in the road transport system. In default of space and time only a very few of the initiatives of the last thirty years, or indeed of the century, have been examined. Some very important influences, such as traffic demand management and areas represented by AITPM, public transport, improving urban amenity and reducing conflicts between pedestrians and vehicles, important work in developing uniform or consistent road transport law through the National Road Transport Commission, have not been mentioned. Nor have the advent of a national driver licensing scheme or national road rules (approved by Transport Ministers only last year), or enforcement, demerit points and penalties.

Some familiar problems will still be around, decades hence, to plague the road safety professionals of the future. New ones will probably arise, but they are unlikely to be as deep or as broad in their contribution to road trauma as some of their counterparts in the past and present. It may be that social changes, and such things as the amount and level of supervision and enforcement that we will accept, or the amount of encroachment on personal freedoms that we will tolerate, will be far different, and that the problems of the present and the century past will astonish the road safety practitioners of the future.

The only certain thing about the future in road safety is that it will surprise us, and sooner than we expect. There have been several previous occasions when people thought they had come to the end of the line in terms of significant improvement. Past experience should tell us that we cannot assume that. But equally, past experience can teach us not to assume complacently that a falling trend will continue, without continuing vigilance, vision and new initiatives.

REFERENCES

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2. Clark, J (1999) The Past: Hit and Miss in Safe and Mobile Introductory Studies in Traffic Safety ed Clark J, EMU Press, Armidale

3. Henderson M (1971) Human Factors in Traffic Safety: A Reappraisal Traffic Accident Research Unit, Department of Motor Transport NSW, February (Report 1/71)

4. Grahame, Kenneth The Wind in the Willows Magnet London 1978 (reprint)

5. FORS (1998) The History of Road Fatalities in Australia Monograph 23

6. National Association of Australian State Road Authorities (1987) Bush Track to Highway 200 Years of Australian Roads, Sydney

7. Austroads, (1997) Road Facts ’96 An Overview of Australia’s road system and its use, Sydney

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