Anybody out there that’s listening, tell your little ones that you love them every day because tomorrow they may not come home.”
Is this a parent talking from a war zone or after a natural disaster or some terrorist attack?
No. It is an Australian parent of an eight-year-old boy killed crossing a road with his 11-year-old sister. The girl is now in a critical condition in hospital.
The comparison between the roads and the “war on terror” is instructive.
More people died on Australian roads over Christmas-New Year – 54 – than in the London bombing of 2005 – 52.
More people died in the ACT in 2005 – 26 – than all of the political-terrorist killings on Australian soil since federation.
But is anybody out there listening?
The ACT used to have the lowest road toll per population of any jurisdiction on earth, until events of 2005. The toll shot from 10 to 26. Further, research showed that the raw ACT figures paint a distorted picture. They do not reveal that ACT drivers do a lot of interstate maiming and killing.
Apparently many smug ACT drivers who are used to our wonderful roads are too incompetent to handle rougher conditions.
In Australia, between 1700 and 1900 people die on the roads each year. You are six times more likely to be killed on the road than be murdered. Since September 11, 2001, Australians have been more than hundred times as likely to die in a road smash than by a terrorist anywhere in the world.
So how has the Federal Government respond to these risks and dangers? Well, it certainly does not spend in the area that would prevent the most death and injury and improve Australians’ lives. Rather it does the opposite.
In 2004-05 it spent just $18 million on the Australian Transport Safety Bureau. And that includes air, rail and maritime safety as well as roads. Probably less than half its budget goes on roads.
Yet ASIO’s budget is $171 million. ASIO’s staff is approaching 1000. The ATSB has just 110 staff, only a fraction of which goes to roads. And there is much more counter-terrorism spending in other Federal agencies.
Just the economic cost of road smashes – approaching $20 billion a year — warrants higher spending. The Federal Government is spending less than 50 cents a person a year in the effort to prevent smashes which cause $1000 damage a person a year.
Sure, the states have a role, too. The Federal Government can easily argue that road trauma is a state matter. But then so is crime prevention, but that does not stop the Federal Government’s massive increase in funding to prevent the crimes of terrorism – murder, assault, property damage etc.
The small-l liberal view that government should do the greatest good for the greatest number has been replaced by opinion manipulation and concentration on vote-changing issues.
Governments are terrified of a terrorist attack in Australia. They will be blamed for not having done enough to prevent it. Whereas the road toll is accepted and underplayed – it is old, not news.
Further, government is not blamed for road injury and death – drivers are. Yet governments should take responsibility because they have shown in the past that when they act, they get a result.
Indeed, some of the very things that it went over the top with on terror it should use to reduce road trauma – money, electronic surveillance and curbing some liberty.
Most people accept compulsory seat belts and helmets, random breath testing and speed cameras because they have been effective. In 1970 30.4 people per 100,000 died on the road, now it is down to just under nine.
We will never be able measure the effect – if any — of the loss of civil liberties in the “war on terror”.
People would applaud more money spent to improve roads.
But we need more work because the road toll appears to have plateaued rather than continuing the downward trend begun in 1970.
Here are some suggestions.
We should develop double-yellow-line cameras. If you can have a miniature camera on a cricket pitch, why not on yellow lines on windy roads where you rarely see police?
We should force car makers to change speedometers so the maximum displayed speed is, say, 125km/h. This might take some of the thrill out of speeding.
We should get more truck freight off the roads and on to rail, by charging the real cost of road traffic to truck owners.
Rear-vision mirrors, bells, and flashing red lights and reflector belts at night should be compulsory for cycles.
The rule that turning traffic gives way should mean that cars turning at intersections should have to give way to pedestrians as well..
We should have a lot more speed humps and pedestrian crossings.
We should have more speed and red-light cameras so that driver attitude changes to a presumption that speeding and running red lights will result in a fine, rather than it being “bad luck”. Being caught speeding should not be regarded is bad luck, but immoral and incompetent driving.
The idea that speed cameras are revenue raising is absurd. In an ideal world they would raise no revenue because no-one would speed. Speed cameras would be better seen as expenditure cutters. Every accident prevented saves taxpayers’ money, leaving aside the trauma.
Many people go through life without smashing a car or without getting a demerit point. If everyone did that, the road toll would go towards zero, where it should be.
The US, Britain and Australia have spent billions of dollars to counter terrorism which their policies have been at least partly the cause, yet so little is done about the four-wheeled weapons of mass destruction on every street.
More Australians – 170,000 – have died on the roads since records began in 1925 than have died in all the wars this nation has taken part in. . . . If anybody out there is listening.