Citation

Lake S. J. Australas. Coll. Road Saf. 2015; 26(1): 49-54.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, Australasian College of Road Safety)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

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Abstract

This article begins with a bold, and some would say, cynical statement. For years now governments and vehicle manufacturers have spent hundreds of billions of dollars, uncountable hours and very high expertise designing safer roads, safer vehicles, safer road sides, implementing systems and improved regulations, in a bid to continue to reduce the numbers of people killed and injured and damage done on the road. Then they put people in charge of vehicles. Without people in control of vehicles the number of incidents on the road would be next to zero. The human being is the only part of operating a vehicle, or the roads, roadsides, etc. that cannot be engineered or designed to be next to perfect, and in truth fails at the task of driving so often. Some would say "what about weather, falling trees, animals and so on?" Well, engineering can provide solutions to these 'external' factors with improved roads, roadsides and vehicle responsiveness. To give you an example, consider the technology available in newer Volvos. It keeps the car within the lane; ensures there is sufficient space kept in front of the vehicle to be able to stop; scans the road ahead and if it detects anything coming out in front brakes immediately. It has ESC, ABS, EBD etc. And these are only the active safety devices. It then has additional passive devices in case a crash actually occurs - such as airbags.... The human being is by far the greatest cause of incidents on the road. Changing road user behaviour is often achieved through enforcement and punishment processes, but education and training is an important part of achieving change. Changing behaviour through education and training is not simple but if done well can be effective. Therefore, education and training in relation to road user behaviour is an important component in the efforts to reduce road incidents. Based on this, there is a strong argument that education and training needs to be implemented on a wider scale as part of the various licence schemes in Australia.

Language: en