Over the last months The Courier has also run a series of articles called Homesafe: What Next? The title refers to the idea that everyone should make it home safely and should also be thinking consciously that their actions and choices will, from the moment they turn the ignition, dictate if they too make it home safe or end up in some life-shattering collision.  What Next is a call to the whole community and government to think about the next strategy that will have a demonstrable downward effect on the road toll comparable to the breakthrough changes like seatbelts and drink-driving legislation. This series of articles has made a conscious comparison with other countries, not necessarily to promote ranking but to highlight ideas that may have worked and may have application here.  The issue of road safety has hit so many communities and cost so many countries so much since cars became faster, populations larger and risks greater that this is a shared experience. As such the world wide pool of ideas is rich and efficacious. We need to learn from them.

But here in Australia, we also need to learn one basic road rule and that is every driver is in charge. Every driver is responsible for the tonne of steel they send hurtling down the highway. Albeit there are some circumstances we cannot avoid but these remain the exceptions and on the whole in the car we are still masters of our fate.  As such attitude change and from it behavioral change could alter everything. An attitude to driving focussed on full and considered responsibility of risks, complex as they may seem across a dozen areas of vulnerability ( causing 95 percent of the road) could help work the Toward-Zero miracle.   

So the State Government is to be commended in incorporating education into its latest step into the campaign. Beyond scare campaigns; the threat of being caught or immolated in carnage or grief, the basic concept of teaching the young a whole new attitude toward risk and responsibility might be the game changer we need.