Road tolls in Australia are rising despite an increasingly safer fleet of cars on our roads. The top body of each motor club based in the state wants better government data to understand why.
The Australian Automobile Association (AAA) says there is a “forced case” for a better database of crash statistics, so stakeholders have a clearer view of which road policy is failing. lose.
The latest federal government figures show that road tolls rose 3.9% in the 12 months to the end of February 2023, with 1187 people tragically killed.
Meanwhile, the full-year road death toll with 1193 deaths in 2022 is the worst result since 2017, when 1222 people were killed on Australia’s roads.
AAA chief executive Michael Bradley said governments should make public all data that can shed light on the cause, rather than just road toll figures.
“We know the death toll is continuing to rise, but we don’t have any national data on serious injuries, road quality, cause of the crash or details about the accident,” Bradley said. persons and means involved”.
“Knowing how many people are killed in traffic accidents is not enough – we also need to know how they were killed and how to prevent these deaths in the future.”
In fact, AAA’s Budget 2023-24 submission proposes that federal road funding for states and territories be phased out subject to more transparency of state-driven road collision data. hold, “so motorists and taxpayers can assess what is going on.”
AAA says such relevant data includes safety assessments of road infrastructure; accident casualty details including crash type, location and conditions, vehicle details, pedestrian details and behavioral factors; as well as enforcement and compliance data.
Mr. Bradley added: “It makes no sense for governments to set targets on road safety and not publish relevant data on what is working and, more importantly, what is not working.”
An important part of this is a long-term proposal to reinvest all fuel consumption revenue into trucking, with AAA positing the current ratio at less than 60%.
Infrastructure Department figures show 1187 people were killed on Australian roads between February 2022 and February 2023.
47.3% of the fatalities were drivers, 15.4% passengers, 13.3% pedestrians, nearly 20% motorcyclists and 3.4% cyclists.
The most affected demographic group is the 40-64 year old group, with 376 deaths during this period, accounting for about 32% of the total number of traffic accidents. An additional 492 (41%) came from the 17 to 25 and 26 to 39 year old age groups.
The gender divide is stark, with 870 of the 1186 deaths being men, and while most Australians reside in cities, road tolls in the region are much higher (776 deaths). death to 417 for the calendar year 2022).
