Visitor roadtest push
TOURISTS should be educated on Australian roads and driving conditions before taking the wheel, the nation’s peak automobile body says.
The Australian Automobile Association has called on the Federal Government to fund strategies to reduce the road toll with something similar to New Zealand’s international driver program.
Road crashes are costing the economy $30 billion a year, with the target to reduce road trauma by 30 per cent by 2020 almost certain to fail.
As part of the latest call to reduce road deaths, tourists would take an online training course on arrival or even on their way that would run them through real-life scenarios of our roads and conditions.
Road trauma is a leading cause of death for visitors.
The New Zealand course, which reaches thousands of tourists a week, asks drivers to pick the correct course of action in various traffic scenarios.
In Tasmania, where international drivers make up 10 per cent of all crash victims, the call is for the training to be mandatory for all international visitors.
The push has been backed by the Australasian College of Road Safety, which says such a program has “merit”.
“All the figures are going in the wrong direction in terms of road trauma,” said AAA chief executive Michael Bradley, who said the education should be federally funded and encouraged but not mandatory.
“This is one way the Federal Government can take some responsibility and make our roads safer.”
Mr Bradley said the piecemeal state-by-state approach to international drivers was endemic of why more federal leadership was needed.
“The Federal Government needs to be more involved in identifying emerging road safety issues and co-ordinating the activities to best manage them,” he said.
Mr Bradley also said obtaining more data from crash sites — particularly on mobile phone use — should be another key priority to reduce the road toll.
The RACT said Tasmania was a popular driving holiday destination for tourists but often its roads were not studied enough by new drivers.
“We’d like to see this education occur for all tourists and look potentially at making it mandatory later down the track,” RACT’s Stacey Pennicott said.
Tourism and Transport Forum chief executive Margy Osmond said any additional hurdles for tourists would be counter-productive.
“While road safety is critically important, potentially expensive and time-consuming mandatory driver education courses for international visitors could discourage tourists from exploring many parts of Australia,” Ms Osmond said.