Peak motoring body says National Road Safety Strategy is en route to failure
Nearly 90 per cent of the targets contained within the National Road Safety Strategy (NRSS) will not be met, the Australian Automobile Association (AAA) states.
The peak motoring body conducted an analysis as part of its submission to the federal government’s inquiry into the strategy.
Signed by state and federal governments in 2011, the strategy specifically aims to reduce death and injuries by 30 per cent through the decade to 2020 and contains 33 individual Safety Performance Indicators.
The results of AAA’s study reveal only four of the 33 indicators are ‘on track’ to be met, while a further six have been classified as ‘not on track’, and 15 have been deemed ‘unlikely to be met’.
The results are set out in the AAA’s National Road Safety Strategy Progress Report, which compares data from regional, remote and metropolitan roads.
The study indicates that governments are failing to fulfil the commitments made earlier, AAA says.
The number of deaths from crashes involving a heavy vehicle was down 17 per cent in 2016 compared with 2008-10 baseline figures.
However, the statistics for responsible road use were mostly discouraging.
As of December 2017, no Australian state is on track to achieve the NRSS target for reducing road deaths, the report notes.
AAA chief executive Michael Bradley says that eight of the 33 indicators are still not being measured or tracking on agreed targets.
“This analysis is a damning indictment of those who have been responsible for the Strategy’s implementation since 2011 and reflects a disjointed and disorganised approach to road safety in this country,” Bradley says.
“That fewer than one in ten KPIs are likely to be met – and that a quarter of KPIs still aren’t even being measured – reinforces the widely held view that government does not take this problem seriously.
“We have just experienced the deadliest month on Australian roads since 2011 and it should serve as a wake-up call to government that continued inaction is having devastating consequences.”