Without accurate data, there's no way to hold state and federal infrastructure ministers to account for the state of rural roads that are killing people, LNP spokesperson for Northern Australia Susan McDonald says.
Nor is there any way of knowing whether the money that is directed to roads is having the desired outcomes.
Senator McDonald, who's very familiar with the state of roads in Queensland's regions, and the awful tragedies behind many of those little white crosses on road verges, has joined with the Australian Automobile Association in calling for urgent federal action on identifying the causes of bad crashes, in light of statistics that show higher risks for non-metropolitan drivers.
According to Ms McDonald, AAA analysis in Queensland showed regional drivers are dying at three times the rate of metropolitan drivers, while in WA the regional driver death rate is nearly 20 times the city rate.
Nationwide, regional drivers are dying about five times the rate of city drivers.
In addition, a 2022 RACQ analysis showed 17 regional Queensland roads - including seven in North Queensland - were considered "high to medium" risk of serious injury and death.
"What we need to understand is that data is currently reporting regional road deaths in a holistic way, and hospital data isn't being reported in a consistent way, or being used appropriately," Ms McDonald said.
"What that means is that there's no way to hold state and federal infrastructure ministers to account.
"We also have to remember the number of people that might not die from road trauma but are left permanently injured."
The National Road Safety Strategy 2021-30 that was agreed to by all Australian governments in 2021, includes the following 2030 targets:
- Fatalities reduced by 50 per cent
- Zero deaths of children 7 years and under
- Serious injuries reduced by 30 per cent
- Zero deaths in city CBD areas
- Zero deaths on all national highways and on high-speed roads covering 80pc of the network.
The AAA said the federal government was unable to measure/track the bottom three of these five targets due to a lack of data availability.
According to the AAA, the 2022 metropolitan-to-regional road death rates per 100,000 people were:
- Qld 3.06/10.24
- NSW 1.67/9.32
- Vic 2.07/9.11
- SA 1.79/9.82
- WA 2.84/18.7
- TAS n/a
- NT n/a
- ACT n/a
- Australia-wide 2.24/10.6
"In 2023, Australia is unable to quantify the extent of road trauma, or the effectiveness of interventions being deployed to reduce it," a spokesperson said. "Despite state governments for many years making public commitments to report data regarding serious injuries, road quality, fatality crash data, and enforcement information, the above remain unavailable."
"The only data we know now is that there are fatalities," Ms McDonald said.
"All we know is that people are being killed and becoming quadriplegics.
"When you look at the state of regional roads, there is strong evidence road conditions are a contributing factor to this death rate disparity."
Gaining traction
Ms McDonald said the call was gaining significant traction, saying people were really startled when presented with death and hopitalisation data, and were turning their minds to what could be done.
She said Australia's three northernmost universities had formed a coalition to draw together data to show why northern Australia should be higher up in funding priorities.
"This is something I feel strongly about," she said.
"The integrity of government decision-making is something we should all care about.
"State governments categorise roads - they have a rating system - that should be very transparent so we can see what is deserving of more funding.
"Unless we have that data, we're not getting the outcomes."
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Sally Gall
Based at Blackall, CW Qld, where I've raised a family, run Merino sheep and beef cattle, and helped develop a region - its history, tourism, education and communications. Get in touch at 0427 575 955 if you've got a story idea for me.
Based at Blackall, CW Qld, where I've raised a family, run Merino sheep and beef cattle, and helped develop a region - its history, tourism, education and communications. Get in touch at 0427 575 955 if you've got a story idea for me.
