Food for thought on enforcement as heavy rigids fail to do the right thing
Heavy vehicle fatal crashes and resultant fatalities may have resumed their downward trend after two years when the story was increasingly grim.
Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics (BITRE) statistics show record lows on both scales, with the fatal crash total, at 176 for the 12 months to June, below 180 for the first time in a decade and undoubtedly for several before that, which are not recorded in the current series.
After being stuck at 200 for the period in 2011 and 2012, they sank to 182 in 2015 before rising back to 194 in June last year, much to the alarm of the trucking industry, governments and observers.
That rise put a brake on the trend change percentage for the last 10, five and three years, which was -2.6, -1.2 and -0.5 respectively.
Fatalities from those crashes are also in new territory. At 191, they are below the 200 mark for the first comparable time.
The story here is one of hiatus that may have ended, with the reduction struggling to break through the 210s for the four years to June last year after hovering around the 230 mark for the three years before.
Read BITRE’s first quarter 2018 report here
The trend change percentage for the last 10, five and three years is more robust at -2.9. -2.9 and -3.1 respectively.
Credit for the reduction can be laid mostly at the heavy articulated truck sector, where fatal crashes were down 16.1 per cent, from 112 to 94, another recent record low, while the average change over the last three years is -3.6 per cent.
While New South Wales was the center of a truck-related deaths furor at the start of the year, fatal heavy-articulated crashes between June 2017 and last June fell 14.3 percent in that state from 42 to 36, though over the past three years to June there was a rise of 11.5 per cent.
The outstanding improvement, however, came from Victoria, which recorded a 12 month drop of 37.5 per cent, from 24 to 15, and a 10.7 per cent drop for the corresponding three years.
The story with heavy rigids is one of steady stubborn rise — from 64 in calendar 2013 to 82 last year.
The narrow silver lining is the recent fall in the past two quarters of this year. At 18 and 15 they are at levels last seen either side of New Year’s Day 2017.
The state roles over the past three ‘financial’ years are the same, with NSW seeing an average rise of 7.9 and Victoria a fall of 9.7 per cent.
Heavy rigid crash fatalities are fairly steady for the last four of five years to 2017 at around 88, while there has been a welcome fall in the June quarter, from 22 to 15, with five of those seen in NSW.