Newsroom

National Road Safety Strategy
Road safety hits the skids

The National Road Safety Strategy is shaping up as a massive car crash, with clear failure to met the key objective of making road travel safer for the Australian public.

The NRSS is the federal government’s plan to reduce road trauma.

But according to a progress report undertaken by the AAA – the representative body of state auto associations – it’s a flop.

“It’s time for the Federal Government to take action to prevent more deaths,” the AAA says.

“December 2017 saw Australia record its worst month of road fatalities in six years."

"The AAA review of all National Road Safety Strategy safety performance indicators reveals the vast majority will not be met."

“Alarmingly, the analysis also shows there are a significant number of indicators which are still not being tracked or measured."

The NRSS set a target of reducing fatalities by 30%, but it has only been cut by 9.1%.

Serious injuries were also meant to come down by 30%, but there is still no national measurement of serious injury from road crashes, meaning this target cannot be evaluated.

The AAA has called on the Commonwealth to reinstate the Federal Office of Road Safety.

"Australia possesses no national system for measuring serious road crash injuries despite the NRSS including the specific performance indicator to reduce the annual number of serious road crash injuries by at least 30 per cent”.

“The Federal Office of Road Safety would again be responsible for developing and implementing integrated federal road safety strategies and programs, as well as national road safety research and data collection."

The progress report is here.

The AAA's safety platform is here.