Every Aussie driver targeted in push to combat $30 billion crisis: 'True epidemic'

Yahoo

13-05-2025

One of Australia's leading road safety advocates is calling for urgent action to tackle the root causes of dangerous driving, warning that without a major shift in attitudes, road deaths will continue to rise.
National Road Safety Week began on Monday, serving as a powerful reminder of the devastating impact of road trauma, and a call to action for all Australians to help ensure everyone gets home safely.
The campaign was founded by Peter Frazer OAM, whose daughter was killed by a distracted truck driver. Speaking to Yahoo News Australia, Peter stressed that this year, a cultural shift is more critical than ever. He said Australia must urgently rethink not just driver behaviour, but also its stance on enforcement, speeding, and accountability on the roads.
At the same time, the financial cost of road trauma has soared to $30 billion annually — and that figure is only expected to climb. "The very first thing that we need to do is to flip everything on its head and start dealing with the reality of risk on our roads," he said. "That's the first thing. We've got to have our governments start doing much more active enforcement, both police enforcement and also automated enforcement, which we can do immediately.
"Just giving the example of NSW, for 13 years we've been pushing for average speed cameras to be used, not just for heavy vehicles but for all vehicles, for light vehicles. NSW — and we congratulate it — but they're only just doing a trial. If we're trying to change behaviour, these obvious things that should be implemented immediately need to be done.
"We need to go back to the concept of 'anywhere, anytime' in terms of compliance and enforcement. We're almost apologetic to the community if we're talking about trying to save people's lives and prevent serious injuries. "We've got to have our governments come on board and say, yeah, this is quite a serious circumstance."
Speeding remains one of the most dangerous and widespread behaviours on Australian roads, including in school zones where children are at serious risk. Peter stressed that tackling speed alone could dramatically reduce the road toll, noting it's linked to 40 per cent of all fatalities. A focused, year-long effort to reduce speeding, he said, could save around 550 lives.
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Peter said that since Covid, there's been a noticeable increase in dangerous and erratic driving across Australia. Over the past four years, the national road toll has risen from around 1,140 to more than 1,300 deaths annually. He described it as a 'true epidemic' — one he believes is preventable, saying 'we've got the vaccines' to stop it.
"We need to recognise, back in 2021, the Commonwealth and state governments decided that we were going to have another National Road Safety Strategy," he said. "[That] we were going to reduce the number of people killed by 2030 by 50 per cent, and that would reduce it from those original 2021 numbers down to 570.
"And right now, if we were on target in 2024, there would have been no more than 900 people killed on Australia's roads. We're almost at 50 per cent above our own target.
"We've got to also recognise — it costs $30 billion in road trauma in Australia every year. Can you imagine the savings to the national economy if we reduced the number of people killed by that 50 per cent? But [we're] headed in the wrong direction — and we have been for the last four years."
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