By all accounts it has been a terrible year in regards to road trauma, with more than 160 people losing their lives and hundreds of others seriously injured.
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There has been an increase in deaths of unprotected road users, including motorcyclists, cyclists and pedestrians and while only about 25 per cent of the Victorian population lives outside of the metropolitan area, more than half of the people killed on the roads this year died in regional areas. This highlights a big problem.
Road trauma is far reaching and we must also remember the countless other community members affected by each incident, including the family and friends of those lost. Road trauma also affects first responders; both Ballarat and Moorabool highway patrol officers have each responded to more than one road fatality this year.
While police have conducted numerous road safety operations and are trialling new initiatives to target the biggest contributors to road trauma - such as speed, distraction, fatigue and drink and drug driving - they have continued to express their frustration at drivers blatantly disregarding the road rules and ignoring key safety messages.
Read more: Police frustrated with driver attitudes
According to the Transport Accident Commission's CEO Joe Calafiore, motorists in regional Victoria are consistently over-represented in the number of lives lost on state roads each year and fatigue is a major factor.
It is believed that fatigue is a likely factor in almost a third of single-vehicle crashes in regional Victoria, with most occurring at night when drivers would normally be asleep.
But despite the vast misconception that those killed on rural roads are tourists who are not knowledgeable about country driving, a large proportion of those killed were within 35 kilometres of their homes.
Another surprising statistic is that about 20 per cent of drivers and passengers who have died as a result of road trauma this year were found to not be wearing seat belts.
This fact has baffled authorities, given Victoria led the world in mandating the wearing of seatbelts in the 1970s. After the legislation was changed, the uptake was hugely successful and the number of deaths on Victorian roads declined dramatically.
So why are people choosing to brush aside measures that can keep them safe, such as buckling up and not using a mobile phone while behind the wheel and what can be done to change people's behaviour?
FROM THE EXPERTS
Earlier this year road safety expert Donald Gibb, who has been integral in numerous successful road safety initiatives, launched a fresh idea named the 'Save Lives' campaign.
The first stage of the campaign involved pinning posters with simple road safety messages in sporting clubs and change rooms to target a younger audience, with the message expected to filter back to parents and families.
Mr Gibb, who was involved in mandating the requirement to wear seat belts as well as other road safety campaigns to reduce the state road toll from 1034, has long maintained that engaging community with road safety messages is the key to addressing road trauma.
For Dr John Crozier, the chair of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons' trauma committee, there are a number of quick wins as well as longer term solutions that can be implemented to reduce trauma. But what he believes Australia really needs is coordinated national leadership on the issue.
Speaking with The Courier last month he raised ideas such as reducing the speed limit on rural roads and reducing the speed limit to 30 km/h in city centres to not only improve amenity for pedestrians and cyclists, but to reduce overall crash fatality and serious injury rates.
Other bigger solutions would be to work with telecommunications companies on technology to deactivate mobile phones once a vehicle starts moving and for the Australian design rules to mandate that every new light and heavy vehicle being shipped to Australia has autonomous emergency braking systems, which would result in a huge decrease in rear end crashes. The federal government is currently considering these options.
Electronic Stability Control (ESC) is already mandatory for new light passenger and commercial vehicles and will become mandatory for prime mover trucks from late 2020, while Antilock Brake systems are also already mandatory for new motorcycles.
Over at the Monash University Accident Research Centre (MUARC), a lot of exciting research is being undertaken.
One promising research study currently being completed aims to address the prevalence of extreme fatigue in road trauma.
The research, run by Monash University, the Department of Transport, the TAC, Victoria Police and the Alertness CRC, is testing if fatigue can be tested roadside in a similar way to alcohol and drug testing.
MUARC researcher Professor Max Cameron has focused on two issues this year: drug driving and speeding.
He believes initiatives such as rolling out further drug tests would be beneficial to address what he said is an "important part of the problem".
In the 2019-20 financial year Victoria Police will conduct 150,000 random drug tests, with a proportion of them undertaken by officers at single member stations in rural areas.
This increase in testing was based on advice provided by MUARC in recent years and Professor Cameron believes that given its success, it could be extended further.
Another significant issue is rural speed enforcement. While speed is just one of many factors which can contribute to a crash, if a crash does occur on a rural road, speed can increase the trauma sustained.
"The speed vehicles are travelling in rural areas makes a crash more likely to be fatal or result in serious injury," Professor Cameron said.
While reducing speed limits in rural areas is one piece of the road safety puzzle, another is enforcement.
Rural mobile speed cameras are often predictable in where and when they are rolled out. So as with drug driving, making the threat of being caught speeding much less predictable so people change their behaviour is paramount.
While the government recently announced it would increase mobile speed camera hours by 75 per cent, actioning that in rural areas is yet to be seen.
"It's not just a matter of increased hours, it's a whole different way of speed enforcement in rural areas," he said.
One way this could be addressed could be through point to point average speed cameras, of which there is now a mobile version.
It works with two or more vehicles parked at the starting point and end of a long stretch of road and unlike the permanent fixtures which are very visible, they can easily be moved around to roads which warrant special attention.
Meanwhile, another important trial which is currently taking place in New South Wales is around new technology to detect drivers using a mobile phone behind the wheel.
The trial involving the technology, developed in Victoria, is being watched by the Victorian government.
GOVERNMENT VIEW
Minister for Road Safety and the TAC Jaala Pulford said there was no single factor as to the "tragically increased number of lives lost on Victorian roads this year", but evidence revealed many fatal crashes on both regional and metropolitan roads were the result of a "simple mistake".
"The evidence shows many fatal crashes on both regional and metropolitan roads are the result of a simple mistake, so we are building roads that are more forgivable when that happens - especially on high-speed regional roads where these mistakes are particularly devastating," Ms Pulford said.
She said the government had invested $1.4 billion to the Towards Zero Action Plan, to upgrade, repair and resurface some of the state's highest risk roads as well as installing safety barriers, new roundabouts, overtaking lanes and rumble strips.
Read more: New laws for drivers come into effect
Other works being delivered include eye-catching green signage and linemarking at town entrances to alert drivers entering from a highway to the fact they need to slow down.
The government recently announced it would roll out new mobile speed cameras around the state, with new state-of-the-art technology which can detect speeds up to 350 km/h and detect multiple speeding motorists at once.
Ms Pulford said the government was also working with road safety partners to investigate the future of new road safety technology, including for mobile phone detection behind the wheel.
Road Safety Victoria was earlier this year established to bring together the Department of Transport and VicRoads to work with road safety partners in a more coordinated way to develop road safety strategies and policies to tackle the toll and support the development of the government's next road safety strategy.
Apart from funding upgrades to road infrastructure, Ms Pulford said the government was also funding research and education, but reiterated that road safety is everybody's responsibility.
"I encourage every Victorian to drive safely and responsibly," she said.
Earlier this year, Acting Inspector Ben Young told The Courier that: "We will never be in a position where we can police ourselves out of road trauma and [police] need a dedicated commitment from all road users to put road safety for everyone at the forefront of their decisions in regards to driving".
It is this message we should all take into the new year before we get behind the wheel of a car, because we don't want another horror year on the roads.
