New research from the Australian Road Safety Foundation (ARSF) has exposed a deadly false sense of safety on Australia’s country roads, where 906 people were killed last year, a 10.5 per cent rise in just twelve months.
Released to mark Rural Road Safety Month, held this August, the research lays bare the human factor behind the statistics: a widespread and misplaced confidence that regional roads are forgiving, which is continuing to cost lives unnecessarily.
This is a confidence not borne out by reality: while more than a quarter of drivers (27%) think rural roads are safer than city streets, the fact that more than two in every three road deaths (69%) happen in regional areas paints a very different, and stark, picture.
ARSF’s research places the responsibility squarely on human behaviour and the choices made on and around the road.
The data showed that more than half of all Australian drivers (53%) admit to breaking a road rule on a country road.
But most alarming is the ‘why’ – the number one excuse for these poor choices was simply that they believed it was safe to do so (35%), well ahead of distraction (19%) or fatigue (17%).
On country roads, speeding was the most common offence (36%), followed by driving while fatigued (21%) and using a mobile phone (15%).
And it was often on the most relaxed of journeys, with rule breaking most common during holiday and recreational travel (23%) and trips to visit friends and family (21%) – the very journeys meant to bring people together.
This Rural Road Safety Month, the ARSF is calling on all road users to Join the Journey – making a personal promise to choose road safety, host or take part in a community or private event, or helping to kickstart cultural change by sharing the free education assets available at https://arsf.com.au/
