The National Road Safety Strategy 2011-20 (NRSS) expectation of 30 per cent reduction of road trauma has failed to achieve its goal and the government needs to be accountable for the failure in commitment to the existing Strategy to guarantee safety on our roads. This can only be achieved by making the sometimes seemingly hard decisions needed to achieve better outcomes. In the absence of these the number of preventable road deaths will continue to increase.
Many solutions to reducing Australia’s devastating road toll and creating safer roads have already been identified and the delays taken to implement life-saving initiatives is leading to unnecessary deaths. This was stressed in the Inquiry into the NRSS and the Reviving Road Safety report (developed by the Australian Automobile Association) both highlighting solutions that can be implemented to deliver better outcomes and significantly improve road safety.