Road safety in Australia

Around 1,200 people are killed each year on Australia's roads and about 40,000 are seriously injured. Australia has a goal of zero deaths and serious injuries on our roads by 2050[1] (Vision Zero).

The National Road Safety Strategy 2021–30 sets a target of 50% reduction in deaths and 30% reduction in serious injuries by 2030.[2]

As of February 2026, Australia is not on track to reach its road safety targets, with 1,296 deaths on roads in the 12 months to April 2024 and a rising number of lives lost over the past five years.[3]: 11, 63 

Introducing 30km/h speeds in urban residential areas would reduce the annual number of lives lost on Australian roads by 13 per cent.[3]: 16 [4]: 55 

Overview

In Australia road deaths are reported at a state level as well as nationally by the Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics.[5] [6] Similar to New Zealand, Australia also reports national figures for special holidays, though usually only for the Christmas and Easter holiday periods.

In 2010, 1367 people lost their lives in road traffic crashes in Australia.[7] While strategies to reduce road deaths, including legislation, improvements to vehicles which help to make them safer, and educational programs have been developed by the national government, under the 1992 Road Safety Strategy, it is up to the local governments to adopt and enforce these policies.[8] The state of Victoria has implemented several initiatives such as speed camera, random alcohol breath tests, and an integrated state trauma system, which have successfully reduced the number of deaths caused by road traffic crashes.[9] Requiring motorists and passengers to wear seat belts appears to have reduced road deaths in Australia.[10]

Random breath testing ("RBT"), utilised throughout Australia, differs from the sobriety check-points commonly used in other countries. In Australia, random breath testing is accomplished by setting up a highly visible road block, wherein all drivers passing through are asked to take an alcohol breath test, regardless of whether there is any cause to believe the driver has been drinking.[11] RBT was shown to reduce alcohol related road deaths by 8–71% in fourteen different studies reviewed by Dr. Corinne Peek-Asa.[12]

New South Wales

In the state of New South Wales the agency responsible for managing roads and streets is Transport for NSW. The first listed priority in the October 2025 "Connecting NSW Strategy Priorities for Transport" strategy is "Towards zero trauma".[13] Daily statistics are published on the NSW Centre for Road Safety Statistics page.[14]

The Transport for NSW 2026 Road Safety Action Plan has an identical target to National Road Safety Strategy 2021–30.[15]: 11 

In 2022, TfNSW commissioned Real Time Traffic with its partner Lab3 to provision a deployable computer vision technology to detect and report near misses and crashes weekly. Over a period of two weeks, 217 near misses were detected at two locations.[16]

Use of the term 'road toll'

'Road toll' is a legacy term used in Australia for the number of deaths caused annually by road accidents. While the term is still sometime used, most agencies instead using the phase "road deaths",[17] "road fatalities",[18][19] "lives lost"[20] or "road trauma".[21] The problem with talking about 'road toll' is that "it implies that road trauma is an acceptable cost of having roads."[22] Journalists[23][24] and media reporting guidelines suggest not using the term.[18]

See also

References

  1. ^ "National Road Safety Strategy". Commonwealth of Australia. Archived from the original on 5 September 2025. Retrieved 3 November 2025.
  2. ^ "National Road Safety Strategy 2021–30" (PDF). Commonwealth of Australia. December 2021. Archived (PDF) from the original on 26 June 2025. Retrieved 3 November 2025.
  3. ^ a b Showcasing safe Movement & Place (PDF) (Report). Roads Australia. February 2026. Archived (PDF) from the original on 19 February 2026.
  4. ^ Dick van den Dool; Paul Tranter; Adrian Boss (2017). "Safe-Street Neighbourhoods: the role of lower speed limits" (PDF). Journal of the Australasian College of Road Safety. 28 (3). Archived (PDF) from the original on 6 February 2026.
  5. ^ "Australian Road Deaths Database". Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics.
  6. ^ "Road Deaths Australia—Monthly Bulletins". Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics.
  7. ^ "Accidents Injuries and Fatalities: Transport Related Deaths". 1301.0 – Year Book Australia (2012). Australian Bureau of Statistics. 24 May 2012. Retrieved 21 July 2014.
  8. ^ "Vehicle Collisions in Australia". NSW Compensation Lawyers. Archived from the original on 13 July 2014. Retrieved 21 July 2014.
  9. ^ Atkin, C; Freedman, I; Rosenfeld, J; Fitzgerald, M; Kossmann, T (November 2005). "The evolution of an integrated state trauma system in Victoria, Australia". Injury. 36 (11): 1277–87. doi:10.1016/j.injury.2005.05.011. PMID 16214472.
  10. ^ Bhattacharyya, M; Layton, A (1979). "Effectiveness of Seat Belt Legislation on the Queensland Road Toll – An Australian Case Study in Intervention Analysis". Journal of the American Statistical Association. 74 (367): 596–603. doi:10.1080/01621459.1979.10481655.
  11. ^ Homel, R (1990). "Random Breath Testing and Random Stopping Programs in Australia" (PDF). In Wilson, R.J.; Mann, R.E. (eds.). Drinking and Driving: Advances in Research and Prevention. Guilford Press. ISBN 978-0898621709.
  12. ^ Peek-Asa, C (January 1999). "The Effect of Random Alcohol Screening in Reducing Motor Vehicle Crash Injuries". American Journal of Preventive Medicine. 16 (1): 57–67. doi:10.1016/S0749-3797(98)00116-0. PMID 9921387.
  13. ^ Transport for NSW (October 2025). "Connecting NSW Strategy - Priorities for Transport" (PDF). New South Wales Government. p. 5. Archived (PDF) from the original on 1 November 2025.
  14. ^ NSW Centre for Road Safety. "Statistics". Transport for NSW.
  15. ^ Transport for NSW (October 2025). "Connecting NSW Strategy - Priorities for Transport" (PDF). New South Wales Government. Archived (PDF) from the original on 1 November 2025.
  16. ^ Justin Lu (Real Time Traffic Pty Ltd). Informing road safety policy with near-miss detection technology (PDF). 2023 Australasian Road Safety Conference. p. 304. Archived (PDF) from the original on 19 May 2024. Retrieved 3 November 2025.
  17. ^ Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics. "Monthly road deaths". Commonwealth of Australia.
  18. ^ a b "Media guidelines for reporting road traffic incidents" (PDF). Injury Matters. Injury Matters, Road Trauma Support WA. 2022. p. 6. Archived (PDF) from the original on 26 June 2024.
  19. ^ "Latest weekly road fatality report". Queensland Government.
  20. ^ "Road Safety Statistics". Transport for NSW. NSW Government. Retrieved 1 November 2025.
  21. ^ "Road Trauma Australia—Annual Summaries". Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics (BITRE). The Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications, Sport and the Arts (Australian Government). 23 September 2025. ISSN 2205-4235.
  22. ^ "Lives Lost - Year to Date". Transport Accident Commission. Archived from the original on 10 October 2025. Retrieved 1 November 2025.
  23. ^ Paul Daley (23 December 2023). "The 'road toll' is a benign term that sanitises the senseless waste of human life in Australia". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 29 May 2024.
  24. ^ Cary Grant (4 January 2018). "Can we stop saying 'road toll'?". Stuff. Archived from the original on 18 November 2020.

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