Send not to know for whom the road tolls

EXPECT a fair amount of hand-wringing when the ACT’s road statistics come out at the end of the year. Most likely they will show a large percentage increase because of the crash which killed four people last month.

That alone will add between 20 and 25 per cent to the toll, taking it from around four per 100,000 to around five.

But the ACT is such a small jurisdiction our road toll fluctuates widely from year to year and not much should be read into it, but it will be.

Mercifully, Chief Minister Jon Stanhope has not been a beater of the law-and-order drum so maybe we will be spared a rash of knee-jerk reactions, especially stiffer maximum penalties.

Stiffer penalties are the easy way out for politicians. However, the history of Australian road crashes – I refuse to use the word “accidents” – shows that there is no single answer, or if there is it certainly is not severity of penalty.

The figures at the end of the year will come 40 years after Australia’s record toll in 1970 of 3798 dead and about 15 times that inured. Since then the toll has steadily fallen because of: seat belts, random breath-testing; cameras; air-bags; better roads; more divided roads; safer cars (anti-locking brakes, stabilizers and so on), among other things.

The one constant, of course, has been the human propensity for misbehaviour behind the wheel.

Oddly enough, just before the ACT’s horrible crash several proposals on road safety were floated. These are probably more considered that some of the proposals floated afterwards.

The author of one has been thoroughly vindicated though not in a way that he would take any comfort from. Criminologist David Biles is certainly not a law-and-order drum beater. If anything his work shows why imprisonment should be the solution of last resort. Yet he suggested that the ACT should revise its presumption in favour of bail in cases of re-offending car thieves. He argued very cogently on these pages that car theft was not a mere property crime. It so often led to further crime and increased public danger.

He thought a stint inside while awaiting trial might be worthwhile. Thirteen days after his article appeared it was revealed that the man who killed himself and three others in Narrabundah was on bail for car theft and other traffic crime.

One could add to Biles’s argument. These people are worse menaces because of the sorts of cars they steal. Invariably they go for older models with less security, with no hi-tech locking devices. Alas, neither do those cars have anti-locking brakes, or even disc brakes. They are often in poor repair with poor steering and tyres and no air bags and usually do not have the design features of more modern cars that reduce injury to pedestrians and people in other cars they might hit.

The ACT has one of the highest car-theft rates in Australia – maybe it is because we have more car thieves out on bail, bonds or community-service orders than other jurisdictions.

Perhaps the courts make an erroneous middle-class assumption that defendants will respect court orders, when the evidence tells us they don’t. One survey said 35 per cent of drivers admitted driving while disqualified. Another put it at 60 per cent. You are never going to get reliable statistics on that, but it is apparent that many do.

Clearly, for multiple offenders, disqualification is meaningless. We have to refuse bail so they are off the road, or impound their car, though the unintended consequence of impounding might be that the offender would be more likely to steal another car. Impounding is favoured by Monash University’s Accident Research Centre.

Another suggestion is to make those convicted of high-end drink-driving fit an alcohol inter-lock on their car. It would require frequent breath-testing to keep the car going. It costs about $2000. Queensland is about to legislate for this. Some people don’t like hi-tech solutions, but the history outlined above suggests they work.

The third proposal last month was Queensland’s suggestion to drop the permitted blood alcohol level to 0.02. That sounds like a cheap quick-fix along the lines of increasing penalties, rather than evidence-based policy. The Monash centre shows that impairment cuts in at a little above 0.05. The drivers in nearly all of these horror crashes are usually several times the limit. There is little evidence of significant numbers of road deaths caused by people between 0.05 and 0.02.

It is true that Scandinavian countries have a limit of 0.02 and a road toll of around two or three per 100,000 – less than ours. But other factors pertain. Their roads are better. They don’t have the massive distances we have in Australia which make fatigue a greater problem.

Many other measures would be more effective, even if some are more expensive. Dual carriageways cut road deaths dramatically.

Randomly placed speed cameras have been effective in Victoria, but too politically sensitive in NSW. And in the ACT we have set places for cameras in white Mercedes vans. Surely we can be a bit smarter than that. The cameras should be hidden. Speeding motorists should know that they can be clicked anywhere any time and the only way to avoid it is not to speed anywhere any time. This would cost very little extra.

Crash testing and publishing data have helped a reluctant car industry take safety more seriously. For a long time the industry thought a fast car sells better that a safe one.

Crash testing, however, is not done on older cars. Too often parents buy for their children, or allow their children to buy, older less safe cars.

Rather than putting older cars over the registration pits which might prove their road worthiness on that day, it would be better to recognise that older cars – particularly those made without airbags and anti-locking brakes – are more dangerous and they should have a speed limit imposed on them – say 90km/h – with a sign on the back much like trucks and buses. That obviously needs some more research. Research worth doing.

It is worth aiming for a zero road toll. We know how much it is worth – about $20 billion and 1500 lives a year.

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