Page 5297 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 15 November 2011
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respondents felt there was an overemphasis on speed and speeding at the expense of other important road safety issues.
As I will outline a little later, while these concerns are recognised, effective speed management measures are a critical part of any road safety strategy. Concerns were raised about speed zoning and speed enforcement, particularly at work sites. There was a strong public message that there needed to be an increase in police presence to enforce all offences, rather than just relying on speed camera technology.
The need for strong linkages between road safety and sustainable transport was also raised, including the need to reduce private vehicle use and hence crash exposure and encourage active travel modes. These public and stakeholder comments have been considered in the framing of the strategy. The strategy also complements work at the national level under the national road safety strategy, or the NRSS. A draft NRSS was released for public comment in December 2010 with comments closing in February this year. The final NRSS was launched on 20 May following its endorsement by Australian Transport Council ministers.
Australia’s national approach to road safety improvement is guided by the safe system approach. A safe transport system requires responsible road user behaviour but also makes allowance for human error and recognises that there are limits to the forces humans can withstand in a crash. An essential element of the safe system approach is the design of roads and vehicles to reduce the risk of crashes and to reduce the harm to people if a crash does happen.
Speed management is also a critical factor in limiting the impact energy of crashes to survivable levels. These two approaches—vision zero and safe system—complement each other. The safe system approach provides the technical methodology to move towards the goal of vision zero.
The previous ACT road safety strategy and its supporting two-year action plans were based on an integrated approach to improving road safety using a range of education, encouragement, engineering, enforcement, evaluation and support measures. The new strategy continues this integrated approach but with a stronger vision element based on vision zero, more robust application of safe system principles and stronger measures to address cultural change.
Key directions for the strategy are to support cultural change in the community towards road safety issues, emphasise speed management as a critical component of the safe system approach, investigate and implement safe system engineering solutions, implement an educational approach to road safety for all road users, with investment in strategic awareness campaigns and lifelong learning measures, support this educational approach with effective enforcement, including an increased focus on visible police enforcement of all traffic offences and stringent controls on repeat and high-end traffic offenders, obtain strong alignment with key safety stakeholders on the overall approach to road safety and implement best practice data, performance monitoring and evaluation processes.
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