Road toll driven more by
haste than speed
From The West Australian
By Paul Murray
January 04, 2007
I’ve known
Grant Dorrington for a fair while through his football and road safety
activities. He was a regular guest on my former radio program, talking
about road safety, and I think it’s fair to say he often drew
a negative response from talkback callers. I generally defended him.
So it probably
won’t please Dorro to read that it’s time he moved on
from the job of chairman of the Road Safety Council.
Mr Dorrington’s response to our shocking 2006 road toll gives
every indication that we need fresh eyes on the problem.
He offers us more of the same — and worse. More speed cameras
on freeways and highways and a red light camera on every major intersection.
That ignores the fact that the 2006 toll comprised 118 deaths on regional
roads and 86 in the metropolitan area, yet the vast majority of our
speed cameras are in the city. That has never made sense.
There was not one new idea in Mr Dorrington’s response —
not even the concession that most of the old ideas were stale. Just
the big stick.
Forty-two more deaths on the roads since the low of 162 in 2005 should
have everyone questioning whether we’re on the right course.
I’m reliably informed that the private rationalisation within
government is that last year’s increase is put down to a spike
in motorcycle deaths and a series of disastrous crashes involving
Aboriginals in the north of the State.
Acting Community Safety Minister John Bowler is also adamant that
WA’s road safety strategy is on the right track:
“The Government is constantly looking for new solutions but
you cannot solve the problems overnight,” he says.
“It took more than 25 years to convince the community about
the dangers of drinking and driving. We are now trying to get the
same message across about speeding.”
So we can expect the focus on speed to continue, when it’s obvious
to anyone who wants to look at the statistics that other factors are
almost certainly more important, many of them attributed to speed.
After a recent column on the road toll, I was contacted by a retired
police officer who had spent 16 years as a traffic patrolman, the
final six as a crash investigator.
“As a crash investigator it became apparent to me that inattention
was a factor in at least 99 per cent of all crashes I dealt with,”
he wrote.
“If you ask for statistics from the police to back this up they
won’t be there simply because of how the Road Traffic Code is
written. What I mean by this can be seen in
the simple rear-end crash: why did the rear car hit the car in front?
“Because he wasn’t paying attention to what was going
on.
“The infringement that is issued to him is for the offence of
‘following too close’ and not for ‘careless driving’
unless the offending driver makes the admission of inattention.
“It is the same for any of the ‘failing to give way’
offences.
“Inattention caused the crash (not bothering to look properly)
but as there are specific offences for ‘failing to give way’
this is what the ticket is issued for and not ‘careless driving’.
“Even in the mysterious single-vehicle crash that results in
death, why did it happen? Quite often the police will report that
excessive speed was a factor.
“Most of the time we were not referring to exceeding the speed
limit but excessive speed for the conditions (a bend, rain or night
time), but why was the speed excessive?
“Because the driver wasn’t paying enough attention to
the changing road or weather conditions. You are probably asking did
I ever bring this up with Roadwise. Certainly did but I’ll let
you guess what they did with it.”
If my correspondent is right it makes a mockery of the road safety
statistics and the strategies that respond to them. He makes another
telling point:
“Finally, there are not enough traffic cops on the road to catch
these miscreants in the first place, so again they even have less
to fear.
“For example when I first started there were 12 traffic cops
at my station to look after the patrol area, two sergeants to look
after the admin side of things, two patrol officers for the crashes
and eight dedicated staff for patrols.
“When I resigned that had been reduced to one sergeant, one
crash investigator and four staff for patrol duties (unless they were
needed for station duties).”
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau community attitudes survey
released last month asked drivers in all States about their perceptions
of changes in speed enforcement over the past two years.
“There was a degree of variation across the States and Territories
in the extent to which speed limit enforcement was viewed as having
increased,” the report said.
“This ranged from 49 per cent in the Northern Territory to 70
per cent in South Australia. The only State/Territory for which a
significant decline was evident is WA (down from 64 per cent in 2005
to 54 per cent for the current period).”
A reliance on speed cameras just doesn’t wash with motorists.
Unless someone in government is prepared to take a fresh look at what
is really happening on our roads we’re likely to be wringing
our hands over the road toll at this time next year.
