Page 5296 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 15 November 2011
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Road Safety—
Strategy 2011-20, prepared by the Justice and Community Safety Directorate.
Action Plan 2011-13, prepared by the Justice and Community Safety Directorate.
I seek leave to make a statement in relation to the papers.
Leave granted.
MR CORBELL: I am pleased to present to the Assembly the ACT road safety strategy 2011-20 and the road safety action plan 2011-13. The ACT has a good road safety record in comparison to other parts of Australia and indeed the world. We have the benefit of an established and well-designed road system, a general urban environment and a small, well-defined geographic area. But despite this, there is no room for complacency. Each year an average of 14 Canberrans are killed and 565 Canberrans are injured on the ACT’s roads. Over the last five years 71 people have been killed and over 2,800 people have been injured. This level of death and injury affects a great number of Canberrans and their families. Unfortunately, we often take this level of suffering for granted.
The two most common factors leading to road crashes and road deaths in the ACT are speed and alcohol, yet the general community perception is that it is okay to speed and drivers continue to be caught for drink-driving. Increasingly, driver distraction is also becoming an issue. The government is committed to achieving a cultural shift in order to reduce the deaths and injuries on our roads.
The ACT government’s road safety strategy is influenced by the Swedish government’s vision zero policy, which ultimately aims for no-one being killed or seriously injured within the road transport system. Vision zero is important because it moves away from a mindset of only making incremental improvements to road safety. It provides an aspirational goal of what the ultimate state of the road transport system should be.
During 2009-10 a series of roundtables were held with key stakeholders, co-hosted by the then minister, Mr Stanhope, and Alan Evans from NRMA Motoring and Services, to consider if and how this policy could be applied to the ACT. As a result of these discussions, a number of proposed themes were developed for the strategy and a discussion paper on vision zero was released for public comment in August and September last year.
Some elements of the discussion paper were strongly supported, such as tighter penalties for repeat and high-end offenders, more focus on lifelong road safety education and awareness and greater priority for the safety of vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists. There were mixed views on the appropriateness or otherwise of the vision zero philosophy, with the point made that vision zero needed to be supported by a genuine commitment to action. A number of
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