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Unsurprisingly, the pandemic – when many of us could only walk a few kilometres around our suburbs, let alone go on long drives – resulted in a sharp fall in fatalities.
While there were expectations that the death toll would increase from that point, what’s taken place has caught everyone by surprise.
In 2021, federal and state infrastructure and transport ministers set a target of halving the nation’s road toll by 2030 and to cut injuries by 30 per cent.
Over the preceding 10 years, 12,061 people died on the nation’s roads, with another 375,000 seriously injured. The financial cost of that death and destruction is an estimated $300 billion.
The strategy they put in place to reduce the road toll focuses heavily on speed management, the condition of the nation’s roads, the safety of the vehicles on those roads and the behaviour of road users.
“Over 10 years, we expect a significantly reduced burden on our economy and society from road crashes in terms of deaths; life-changing injuries; demands on the health sector; and trauma for families, first responders and communities, including mental health impacts,” the ministers declared.
They were noble words. But the lived experience is very different.
Since the new strategy was signed off, more than 5000 people have died. At the current trend, instead of a 20 per cent reduction in deaths there will be a 4 per cent increase.
The gap between planned reduction and the actual increase is more than 500 people. And that’s just deaths – it doesn’t include the injuries that can leave long-term or lifetime problems for those affected. No state or territory is on track to meet its target.
All sorts of reasons have been proffered for the lift in the road toll. Traditional issues around road accidents, especially speed, continue to play a major role. While the largest number of fatalities continue to occur at or above 100 kilometres an hour, the largest increase in deaths have been where the vehicle was travelling between 60 and 75 kilometres an hour.
But new reasons have emerged, including distractions caused by mobile phones to a drop-off in experience caused by the pandemic to increasingly angry motorists who seem to vent their frustration at life by mowing down other motorists or pedestrians.
Age appears to be another factor. The number of those aged between 40 and 64 to have died on our roads since 2021 has lifted by 20 per cent. Among those aged beyond 75, it has lifted by 26 per cent.
Among those traditionally most at risk of dying – those aged between 17 and 25 – the number of deaths has actually fallen by 11 per cent.
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The Australian Automobile Association is so alarmed about what’s taking place on our roads that it believes it’s time for the federal government to borrow from the airline and maritime sectors and hold broader, so-called “no-blame” inquiries into fatal road accidents.
“Findings of such investigations could help state and territory authorities save lives by highlighting successful life-saving approaches that could be shared,” association managing director Michael Bradley recently explained.
There would have to be some sort of limit on the type or number of investigations launched by the federal government. It could quickly gobble up time and resources that could be better spent elsewhere. Funnelling the reports from state-based investigators and coroners’ courts into a single repository could achieve a similar outcome.
Given no one really knows why a long-term trend in road deaths has turned around, politicians and police and emergency services need more information.
The AAA knows that without change, Australians are just going to literally drive themselves to death.
As a young reporter, I clearly remember a string of terrible accidents on a then two-lane section of the Hume Highway near the village of Jugiong.
In the space of a month or so, two people, then three, then five were killed in three separate vehicle accidents.
Today, this section of road is a separated dual lane of freeway.
But just a week ago, a woman in her 30s died while her infant child was hospitalised after another accident not far from this area.
That’s a life cut short and a young life that will be bereft of a parent, the human and financial cost that will filter down the generations.
Shane Wright is a senior economics correspondent for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
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