Continuing fall in the annual road toll is a pleasing development. Last year the ACT had its lowest toll for 25 years. Other states and territories, too, have had record lows, or at least a general trend downward.
But before we bask in self-congratulation, the reasons for the trend need closer examination. True, the population and car use have risen since the horror tolls of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when typically around 3000 people died and 30,000 people were injured on Australian roads each year, compared to about two-thirds of that now. However, we would be fooling ourselves if we imagined that the fall has come about through any great enlightenment or self-restraint among drivers. There is no cause for self-congratulation because the reduced road toll has come about almost solely through heavy law-enforcement measures and to a lesser extent better roads and safer cars.
The law-enforcement measures have been most significant. In the past 20 years compulsory seat-belts and child restraints, radar, red-light and speed cameras, on-the-spot fines, random breath-testing and demerit points have been introduced throughout Australia and instantaneous licence suspension in some states. It has been a stealthy but significant intrusion into civil liberties. If all the measures had been proposed in one legislative package in, say, 1969 they would have been rejected amid public outcry.
That is not to say they should not have been introduced. Clearly, they have saved many lives and prevented much suffering. It is a case of accepting that they have been necessary “more in sorrow than in anger”. The measures have turned police into prosecutor, jury and judge. Police decide whether to let someone go or to give a ticket and to some extent what penalty (by sometimes giving motorists a ticket for a lower speed than they were actually doing). But it was probably the only way society could respond to the automotive catastrophe of the early 1970s.
Not only have the reckless, speeding, drunken (mainly young male) drivers been responsible for killing, maiming and destroying property, but they have been responsible for the imposition of measures that would ordinarily be contrary to the Australian traditions of liberty.
The tragedy is that despite these measures, 2000 people are still killed in a typical year and 20,000 injured. Clearly, 20 years’ experience has shown that the draconian way can at best be only partially successful. Attitude and education must do the rest.
The only cause for congratulation has been that Australians have such a strong sense of liberty that the heavy police measures (such as giving police the power to stop ostensibly law-abiding citizens, check their identification and demand they blow into a bag) have been restricted to traffic management. We must remain vigilant that it remains thus.