Citation

Newstead SV, Scully J. Proc. Australas. Road Safety Res. Policing Educ. Conf. 2011; 15.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, copyright holder varies, Publisher Monash University)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Road safety is gaining an ever increasing focus by the Australian public and governments at all levels. They are looking at reducing our road tolls through a range of road safety initiatives. This growing attention on road safety over many years has seen a decrease in accident rates but still more can be done to incrementally improve these results. Many of these initiatives are high cost and long term and will take many years to implement, but many of the low cost, immediate impact measures are often ignored. This paper focuses on heavy vehicle safety and aims to demonstrate how innovative reflective technologies can prevent truck crashes and fatalities by increasing their visibility. Over the last 10 years the road toll has shown a declining trend in all vehicle categories, including heavy vehicles despite the facts that the number of vehicles and the kilometres travelled on the roads have significantly increased. It is important that the downward trend remains and simple, low cost conspicuity measures support and accelerate the declining tendency.