If you asked those around you about road safety in Australia, I think most people would think we do pretty well compared to the rest of the world – and they’d be right. Our road toll is below the OECD median.
Children are taught to stop, look, listen and think. Adults are told not to drink and drive, and our roads are built to strict engineering standards.
But if we’re doing so well, why are people still dying or receiving life changing injuries?
As a road safety researcher, and co-chair of the inquiry into the progress of the National Road Safety Strategy, this is a question I’m incredibly focused on.
For years our approach to road safety has been built on the understanding that if you designed roads and cars to the required standards and armed road users with the right information, safety gains would flow. While this has occurred to varying degrees, I would argue that a lack of a specific focus on harm elimination has prevented larger changes from occurring.
Around 2004, a new approach to road safety gained traction amongst Australia’s Transport Ministers and their road related departments. Originating in Sweden in the mid-1990s, the Safe System approach recognised human fallibility as a critical factor in addressing road trauma.
The guiding principles of the Safe System are built around the recognition that humans make errors and that our body can only tolerate a certain level of force before injury is inevitable. It sets an expectation that the road system as a whole should be more forgiving to accommodate human fallibility and vulnerability.
More than anything, this approach has provoked a shift in the way we perceive road safety. It challenges the belief that road trauma is an unfortunate and inevitable by-product of road use by making road safety a shared responsibility. In practical terms this means looking beyond road user performance to find solutions.
The Safe System approach has been central to Australian road safety policy for over a decade, but we’re still struggling to turn theory into practice.
If you look at how road incidents are frequently reported in the media, blame is often solely attributed to the road users. For example, if a driver is texting and causes serious harm to another motorist or pedestrian, we have a tendency to focus on how to stop the driver behaving in this way through more enforcement, harsher penalties or more education. This is often where the conversation stops and little additional attention is given to how the road and vehicle design may have also been a factor. Further still, who questions the duty of care that needs to be shown by the mobile phone manufacturers or the telecommunications companies in ensuring that their products and services are not used inappropriately?
Under a true Safe Systems approach, consideration is given to how all components of the system contribute to an incident. Trying to solve our problems with only individual components is an extremely difficult, if not impossible, task. We require further effort to understand how we can design a system that complements human performance rather than competes with it. I am sure most of the population at some stage would have experienced a near miss and thought “that was lucky” or perhaps, “I didn’t see that coming” – unfortunately for about 1,200 people fatally injured per year and 20,000 seriously injured, luck was not on their side. It’s been this way since the days of mass motorisation and it’s scary to think of what the next decade will bring if we do not respond appropriately.
The Safe Systems approach needs to be more than window dressing or we’ll never reach our target of zero fatalities and serious injuries on our roads. We need to do things differently from the past. We need to understand that there’s a difference between making a ‘safer’ road network and a ‘safe’ one. This will require strong leadership and cultural change however the good news is that all of us can perform a role in change for the better. This will take time however and no doubt many strong conversations about tolerating changes that can bring about better community outcomes. Eliminating harm in small parts of the system first will help us realise that safety doesn’t need to be a trade-off for mobility in an adversarial way. Zero harm on toll roads in Australia is very achievable and I am certain the community would value it, as they do whenever they step onto a passenger plane.
Last month, Dr John Crozier and I worked with Transurban to run an industry roundtable as part of our review into the National Road Safety Strategy.
The event took place at the Transurban Road Safety Centre at Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA) in Sydney. Representatives from infrastructure design and construction, road operations, maintenance and incident response and key stakeholders from government discussed how industry could embed the Safe System approach in their companies and organisations.
Of particular interest to me was feedback on how industry could contribute to the road safety response in this nation. I was encouraged to see that the Safe System concept was quickly understood and embraced by the uninitiated, and barriers to progress proactively identified. Cultural challenges remain, with safety still seen as somewhat of a trade-off between other competing objectives. However the sector demonstrated a capacity for agility and innovation, which was highlighted through nominated projects and presentations. The sector is also capable of raising the level of safety through conditions and expectations that may accompany work contracts for example. There is much the sector can control and influence.
With the adoption of a new national strategy beyond 2020, it is vital that the contribution of the private sector also be included as part of the strategic approach towards the elimination of harm on our roads. There is a safety leadership role for industry if they wish to step up and take it.
