Australia's road carnage spurs review

By GREG ANSLEY

CANBERRA - An urgent study is being made into the behaviour of Australian motorists after a horrendous holiday road toll and signs that a 20-year trend of falling death rates may be reversing.

OECD comparisons released last month by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau show that between 1975 and 1997 Australia slashed its road fatalities from 26.6 per 100,000 population to 9.5.

In the same period, New Zealand's rate fell from 20.3 per 100,000 population to 14.4.

A disturbing number of deaths occurred in single-vehicle accidents on Australia's long, straight country roads, and attention is now focusing on fatigue, which experts say could be as great a danger as alcohol and speed.

There is also growing concern at an apparently rising number of older motorists involved in fatal accidents, making elderly drivers a high-risk group like 18-25-year-olds.

The study will be carried out in New South Wales, which in the holiday peak between Friday, December 22, and Wednesday this week recorded 32 road deaths - more than all the other states and territories combined.

Key elements will include behavioural studies, renewed emphasis on looking at the role of fatigue, and examining the effectiveness of shock advertising, which has focused on the suddenness of random accidents and on personalising the tragedy to young people and families.

It will follow a new national road safety drive started in November when the holiday carnage was foreshadowed in figures showing a rise of almost 3 per cent to 1661 deaths between January and November.

The toll rose in all states and territories except Western Australia and Tasmania.

Worse was to come.

The holiday road toll across Australia reached 62 on Wednesday, with nine deaths in Queensland, seven in Victoria, five in Western Australia and one in the Australian Capital Territory.

The deaths came despite widespread advertising and education campaigns, a nationwide programme to eliminate accident black spots, police safety blitzes and the use of such measures as random breath testing and speed and red-light cameras.

The alarming toll comes as a blow to the new national safety strategy, which aims to reduce the rate of fatalities by 40 per cent in 10 years, reducing it from 9.3 per 100,000 population in 1999 to no more than 5.6 in 2010.

This would save more than 700 lives a year.

Herald Online feature: Cutting the road toll