Citation

McTiernan D. J. Australas. Coll. Road Saf. 2019; 30(1): 46-53.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Australasian College of Road Safety)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

As the road authority for the unclassified (i.e. local) roads in their local government area, councils have the legislated responsibility to manage their road infrastructure; this fundamentally includes the safety of road users on their networks. Almost 70% of the 392 fatalities on NSW roads in 2017 occurred on country roads (Transport for NSW, 2018). The contribution of the local road network to road trauma across Australasia is significant with over half (52%) of all fatal and serious injuries recorded on roads that are the sole responsibility of local government (McTiernan et. al., 2016). Governments at all levels - Local, State and Federal - can no longer ignore the contribution of local roads to the national tragedy and trauma occurring each year. Without a concerted effort by all tiers of government to address road safety performance on the vast local road network, Australia will not achieve the 30% reduction target in fatal and serious injuries as set out in the National Road Safety Plan. Unfortunately, the current status for managing safety on local roads sees a myriad of systemic hurdles and failures that ultimately result in local government not making road safety a genuine priority. But what is required to change this situation? Two case studies are presented to assist a discussion about some of the systemic failures that contribute to local councils not taking, or not being able to take, action to make road safety a genuine priority.


Key Findings • Crashes occur on local roads every day, and represent just over half of all fatal and serious injuries each year across the Australian and New Zealand road network;

• Local government are the road authority for local roads and as such have a duty of care to ensure the safe mobility of their road users;

• Under-resourced, under-funded, lacking appropriate skills and expertise, and applying an outdated approach to road safety mean that road safety is not the priority across their networks that it should be;

• Government road safety funding models need to change to encourage (and reward) councils for adopting a pro-active risk management approach that supports a Safe System approach to road safety.


Keywords: Local government road safety, Safe System approach

Language: en