We have the solutions to reduce road trauma globally, so why aren’t we using them?

By the end of the day, on average, at least three people will have died on Australian roads. Despite hundreds of billions of dollars being invested in road safety initiatives and new and upgraded transport infrastructure, Australia’s road toll – the total number of road fatalities and deaths per 100,000 citizens – is increasing, not decreasing.

But we are not the only country experiencing a regression in our road safety record. Many countries across the globe are also grappling with the same public health and safety emergency.

Every day, more than 3,500 citizens die on the world’s roads and up to 40 times as many are seriously injured.

That’s according to the World Health Organisation which proclaimed a second Decade of Action for Road Safety from 2021-2030, setting a target to halve road fatalities by 2030.

Australia’s Federal and State and Territory Governments embraced the same target in their joint national road safety strategy, which covers the same 10-year period.

However, our police and road safety ministers have acknowledged that it’s getting harder to reduce the number of people being killed or injured without tough decisions.

Reducing road trauma does not only require determined leadership from governments, but also political will, courage and stamina to:

• Choose proven measures such as speed management, which includes reducing speed limits and deploying automated enforcement devices like speed cameras.
• Target funding to the riskiest parts of our road infrastructure network using a proactive data-driven and risk-based assessment approach rather than relying on reactive legacy programs, that may have strong community support, but aren’t having the necessary impact.
• Encourage community-buy-in, and reduce resistance to change, through education, transparent disclosure of how and where road funding and enforcement revenue is spent, meaningful consultation and active engagement in locally-driven, evidence-based initiatives that reduce road trauma.

These were the three crucial levers to reduce road trauma identified in GHD’s comprehensive global road safety research report which brought together expert insights gathered from policy reviews, case studies and interviews with senior leaders from transport agencies and governments around the world.

With safety and problem-solving core to GHD’s DNA, we wanted to put both to work by looking within and beyond our borders at the challenges being faced by road safety professionals, agencies and governments in Australia, as well as overseas in Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and the United States.

We wanted to understand where resources were being invested, what achievements were being made and where other opportunities for improvement had been identified. Despite the deeply troubling and concerning reversal in Australia’s road safety record, the tone of the report is optimistic, and solution-focused.

In addition to our road safety research, our recently released CROSSROADS study, which surveyed 10,000 people across 10 countries to capture community sentiment related to infrastructure priorities and preferences from a generational perspective, unequivocally told us citizens around the world want governments to spend more effort on road safety than easing congestion. This includes increased demand for investment in public transport systems, to make them more efficient, reliable, affordable, accessible and most importantly, safe.

Encouragingly we identified, in both our global road safety report and CROSSROADS study, an incredible level of local and international goodwill to share knowledge and expertise to collectively reduce global road trauma and its human and economic costs.

While this is a positive sign, it’s imperative that we strengthen our focus on shifting mindsets and attitudes. As individuals, communities and as a nation, we need to embrace and enforce within our daily lives a zero-tolerance to road trauma – that one life lost on our roads is one life too many.

Discover more in our report on road safety insights for future generations.

About GHD

GHD is a leading professional services company operating in the global markets of water, energy and resources, environment, property and buildings, and transportation. Committed to a vision to make water, energy, and communities sustainable for generations to come, GHD delivers advisory, digital, engineering, architecture, environmental and construction solutions to public and private sector clients. Established in 1928 and privately owned by its people, GHD’s network of 12,000+ professionals is connected across 160 offices located on five continents.