Call to boost road safety as toll rises

TOWNSVILLE road crashes have killed 12 people in a year when the national death toll to January stood at 1166, up 17 per cent on the same time last year.

Queensland recorded 16 deaths in January, one more than the same time last year.

New national data also shows men are three times more likely to die on roads, outnumbering women 854 to 291. The number of female deaths is also down 13 per cent on the previous year.

Fatal crashes are more likely to happen on a Sunday than any other day and most fatal crashes happen during the day, 658 to 425 at night.

Road deaths per 100,000 population are down to 4.7 fatalities, a 6.5 per cent decrease on the previous year, the Federal Government’s Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional show.

But Centre for Automotive Safety Research director Jeremy Woolley said the statistics did not paint the full picture.

“There’s no indication of serious injuries from road accidents,” Dr Woolley said.

“What we do know is that conservatively it is estimated 36,000 people a year are admitted to hospital (due to road accident injury), and some databases put that figure higher. We are two years off having a Economics figures national database that will provide an accurate snapshot.”

The Federal Government’s National Road Safety Action Plan 2018-2020 defines the need for a database as a “critical action”.

A pilot project is under way. Dr Woolley said the Government “could do much more” to improve road safety.

“They need to take more accountability about the performance of the nation’s roads,” he said. “Safety should be the main focus of any new road project.

“The problem is that everyone assumes safety is number one, but no one manages it. They should be accelerating the introduction of lifesaving technology in cars, such as collision avoidance systems.”

Almost one in five deaths were passengers and 169 crashes involved the death of a pedestrian.

THEY (THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT) NEED TO TAKE MORE ACCOUNTABILITY ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE OF THE NATION’S ROADS JEREMY WOOLLEY