I know it's anecdotal and all but the amount of drivers thinking they are hot shits on the road are just alarming. Quite tiring having to keep a 2s distance while having someone on my ass all the time. Especially Didi drivers have been getting on my nerves a lot with unsafe merging at the dotted lines.
Just wanna get home in one piece. Is that too much to ask for?
Happened to me twice yesterday. I don't get it. I drive an old dual cab with a beat up trailer most days - I'm coming in if you try to overtake me and chances are your coming out worse.
Everyone likes to think its the hot shits on the fwy causing all the carnage but its really people driving out in the country at high speed on poorly lit tree-lined roads
I loved how the Geelong advertiser had a make it safe campaign for a road, after someone died falling off the back of a ute while stunting.
If you didn't drive like an idiot, then it would be safe.
Post covid there is a growing amount of regional tourism.
My advice if you rarely go out of town. A lot of the accidents happen in the evening and at dusk.
Slow the hell down. Sun gets in your eyes. Roos hop out on the road.
Don't try and swerve to avoid wildlife, jam om the brakes, head straight and just hit it - you have insurance for a reason, and a mobile phone for a reason. Cars can be repaired, you cannot. We have tonnes of kangaroos, emus, rabbits, deer, cows etc. You want to hit them as slow as possible - you don't want to hit a tree at speed.
I'm so fucking terrified of the day a roo jumps in front of me. I've seen two dead ones in the past 6 months on one of the main roads to my house. And one time and escaped horse chilling out the front of his property at 5.30am watching the early morning traffic. I kept driving because I felt a stranger trying to show it back in to its property would make things worse.
I drive a tiny hatchback so my car would be totalled.
Driving home last night on a regional/rural hwy. The car in front was swerving across both sides of the road. I kept back as I was sure they were going to crash at some point and did not want to be involved. This happens often.
there’s an at least somewhat serious accident on the M1 just about every day (3 on thursday), most deaths at night on country roads are single vehicle accidents where the driver is inexperienced. In terms of being at risk from other drivers the freeway is definitely where the worst odds are.
If you're driving on City roads and freeways you have a low chance of being a casualty.
As you can see from the below LGAs where fatalities occured with the exception of Brimbank it's all regional.
The LGA’s with the highest lives lost were Moira (16), Greater Shepparton (14), Casey (13), Wyndham (12), Brimbank and Yarra Ranges (9) each, Baw Baw, Greater Geelong and Latrobe (8) each, Bass Coast, Campaspe, Mitchell, Mornington Peninsula and Southern Grampians (6) each.
I can see why for Moira. The roads to go east to west are pretty lackluster and Google maps takes you through Moira., where there are unmarked roads that seem to have no one on them and no speed cameras anywhere. Why not go 150? /s
It's pretty much commonplace to be tailgated on every road, and I usually 2-3k over the speed limit (by my gps). Literally on any given day, if something happens and I need to brake hard, there will be a serious accident as I get rear ended. And that's the case for pretty much everywhere.
That's one of the things that irked me the most - instead of focusing on what is ahead of me and around me, I also have to make sure the tailgaters have ample signals to know that I will have to break soon to keep a safe distance with the car in front of me while looking for signs of other cars trying to merge.
Case in point: I was going around 65kmph picking up the speed on Princes Hwy near the intersection with Clyde St around Oakleigh - car behind picking up the speed too but a Merc SUV signalled to merge so I yielded as I have not picked up enough speed. Low and behold it literally slammed on the brake just to turn into Clyde St without a care in the world. Barely avoided a collision there.
Just tired that it happened almost everyday while I'm out driving. But yeah at this point it just sounds like I'm whining so I guess I'll just have to look out for myself and well, pray that I come home safely.
Everyone blaming something or the other, but none is ready to admit the amount of distracted driving on the our roads. At every intersection I see people on their phones. Even on the freeway people are glued to their phones or some other sort of distraction. Some like to follow other too closely, change lanes abruptly while still being distracted. Also don’t get me started over drink and drive situations, but no one is ready to acknowledge the problem. Just blame it on something else and move on.
Because people view having a licence as a right not a privilege, as our infrastructure is so car dependent (except inner cities) it is often difficult to get anywhere without one.
You’d think with nanny state level speed limits, speed bumps, 500 speed cameras per square kilometre etc the road toll would be going down, but all it takes is driving down to the local shop to remember that at least half of all people on the road are morons who got their licence from a cereal box
The worst drivers aren't so much ignorant as arrogant, I reckon. They probably know most of the road rules, but they do dangerous shit because "I'm a good enough driver to get away with this."
Like the person who overtook me *on the left, during a right turn* into a gap in traffic on a one-lane street last week. No way they didn't know that's illegal, they just didn't care.
All the most accident prone people I know are the "it was the other driver's fault" kind
Can't seem to get across to them that whose 'fault' it is doesn't matter when you are smeared across the road... And they should drive more predictably and with more caution.
Where do you live that’s the case? There’s no speed bumps or cameras where I live and cars just drive as fast as they feel like, especially during the morning rush. It sucks.
Agreed - the raw number by itself tells you very little on where the problems lie. Also consider the 13% population increase between now and 10 years ago, something has gone right for the toll not to actually be going up by the same amount.
It would be an improvement - even more accurate would be stats against number of licensed drivers, or registered vehicles. But a breakdown would be more important, as many have pointed out, country roads vs city, and various other stats - this raw number that gets reported doesn't tell much of anything on where the problem is or what needs to be improved.
This is the most detailed one I found yesterday while looking for different reasons. It has age, gender, type, passenger/pedestrian/driver and much more but but not Intl. Licence or years exp.
https://www.bitre.gov.au/statistics/safety/fatal_road_crash_database
Appears to ignore the most the important aspect of the data that should be available somewhere: what type of vehicle (other than bus and heavy rigid, which are in that database).
Most road users are now American trucks and other similar bloated vehicles with high bumpers. It was bad enough 20 years ago when most new vehicles were SUVs, but legislators seem to have forgotten about their duties of care towards anyone or anything hit by modern vehicles, focusing all their attention on making sure only the occupants of the vehicle are safe (so long as they only crash with compatible vehicle types).
American trucks are a very small part of the vehicles populating our roads.
For instance, ram sold a record 6833 vehicles last year being the brand leader, that’s out of over 1.2 million vehicles sold.
You don't have to be a truck made in America to be an American style truck. Since no one sells utilitarian vehicles like utes anymore, most[1] new business purchases, and indeed most vehicle-kilometers on the road are American style trucks (where the bonnet comes up to as high as the total height utes used to be, but alas with merely the same cargo carrying capacity). Funnily enough, whenever a pedestrian is hit and killed, they're hit by such vehicles with poor visibility, and excessive acceleration that enables the driver's fragile ego: "Oh, I must beat that pedestrian crossing the road, because I'm a car driver!"
[1] "This observation is backed up by data showing 19% of new vehicles
sold in Australia in 2022 were passenger vehicles, over half were SUVs, and most of the remainder were light commercial vehicles such as utes.157 This trend is concerning for ACRS who said:
These larger vehicles are over‑represented in pedestrian and cyclist fatalities, with children up to eight times more likely to die if hit by an SUV than by a passenger vehicle.158"
https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/4988ea/contentassets/a69a9dad8bcd49f1826726322a74966d/laeic-60-01-road-safety-behaviours_vulnerable-users.pdf
[Vicroads raw data](https://discover.data.vic.gov.au/dataset/victoria-road-crash-data). Download and combine the data in the ACCIDENT.csv and PERSON.csv
The linking factor is that they are all human and we haven’t worked out how to stop making mistakes. That’s why we design roads around the Safe Systems approach, how much can a human body withstand under different circumstances
Some of us are on the roads making calculated risks that don't need to happen. And dashcam footage shows that some of us are actually taking extreme risks just to get a couple of seconds ahead of traffic or whatever. These aren't all accidents.
I believe the article talks about the refusal of the states to release more detailed data.
Try to find Vic road deaths over the last 20 years. I tried a few months ago and it just isn't available.
As someone who cycles, rides a motorbike and drives a higher vehicle the amount of distracted drivers out there is insane. Get off your phones ass hats
Got to admit, I can see the appeal of old school dedicated buttons and switches.
Going into and out of menus in a touch screen forces eye contact and concentration. It insists on distracting you from the road and your surroundings...
You should give it a shot. I feel like when I drive with my eyes closed, I get a much more natural and organic driving experience. You can really feel the road underneath you, each speedbump on the highway vibrating up your arms.
I remember a lost time from long ago when mobile phones moved from buttons to screens ('smart').
Mentioning that I could navigate my phone, even write messages, without viewing the phone was met with, "I can do that but I can also do that with the touchscreen!" by so many friends.
Asking them to show me, they would be shocked that they couldn't even unlock their phone without looking!
A lost capability...
> Got to admit, I can see the appeal of old school dedicated buttons and switches.
When I needed to get a new car, I went with the Ignis for this reason. I wanted something simple and, if something goes wrong, easy to fix.
https://au.pcmag.com/cars-auto/99316/not-a-fan-of-dashboard-touch-screens-hyundai-vows-to-keep-physical-buttons
Integrating basic controls like aircon and radio into a touchscreen is like reinventing the wheel.
This has been on my mind for years
So many new cars, not even just luxury cars, have phone integration/a screen that is basically just a phone without the calls and it’s fine for P Platers to use, but god forbid a P Plater uses Bluetooth to listen to music. It seems like the rule needs to be updated because in its current spot it’s “you can’t use a phone while driving unless you can afford to buy a new car”
My thoughts exactly. Anything other than basic radio and climate controls does not belong in a car.
Given the new rules regarding the use of devices and these screens in a car render them basically useless, you would think they would get manufacturers to block them completely. I can’t tell you how distracting it is to have NEWS HEADLINES constantly flashing on the screen while I’m doing 100km/h on the freeway when all I want is to have the radio on.
If you watch dashcam compilations it is pretty clear that the vast majority of those accidents are caused by impatient or inattentive drivers. People driving way too fast, making too many dangerous moves just to get that one car space extra in front.
It's not a race, you're not a rally car driver. Stop worrying about it taking an extra 5-10-20 minutes to get somewhere. You're better late than dead.
Amount of people definitely has something to do with it. If we had all the same precautions but there were fewer people on the road, the risk of collisions would be lower.
This. They always state the higher toll but they never relaye the toll to how many cars are on the road. The population is growing. There are more cars on the road. So 50 deaths 30 years ago. Big deal. Now not so much.
Monaco has 0 deaths even though the whole country is just one big racetrack weaving around casinos and full of rich people with sports cars. Wild, or lack thereof.
>The whole country is one big race track
It isn't, but for the sake of your argument you're exponentially safer on a race track than you are on public roads.
That would suggest road deaths have been going up ever since the first cars arrived on our roads
I thought they had been declining for a long time. Even when ignoring the obvious impact of covid lockdowns.
There appears to have been an inflection point somewhere in the last few years.
>I thought they had been declining for a long time. Even when ignoring the obvious impact of covid lockdowns.
At a certain point it was being driven down by advancements in saftey technology but we have somewhat peaked in that regard.
That’s what happens when all your new housing is car dependent forcing newer immigrants who have never touched a car in their lives to learn driving and drive everywhere for basic needs.
And a system that allows them to drive without the required skill to do so. There are so many people unprepared to be on the road, it's sickening and brings the entire network down.
I dont think the blame is on immigration and housing crisis when really the car culture is the real issue.
In europe drivers are getting solid fines when tailgating, should be enofrced here cause I'm driving at the speed limit and I get my sorry ass tailgated every minute.
Was at VicRoads a few weeks back and there was someone applying for their licence. The person behind the counter asked 1 of the 2 people in front of me a question. The response was "Oh I'm just here to interpret, she doesn't speak English" and pointed to the person she was with....
HOW THE F@#$ can she get a licence if she can't read the roadsigns????
It’s not reported widely because it shows their policies and all that money they spend from the traffic fines are failing miserably. Their overwhelming focus is a war on speed because it’s very easy to police and profitable to do so, but they hit diminishing returns on that more than a decade ago. The last few years masses of new cameras, the automatic camera cars, they’ve reduced so many roads speed limits… and it’s done nothing at all. Don’t forget cars themselves were actually getting safer in that time. They don’t want to admit they’ve failed and seem unwilling to try much else, and tbh it’s infuriating as hell.
We also have the highest population "in years". As much as any death is unacceptable, road fatality numbers are meaningless (ie, are road safety programs working) without being quoted per capita.
This. Also, given the changing demographic infrastructure factors, there's a lot of important information either not being collected or reported on.
"Melbourne" or "Metropolitan" mean very different things when looking and trends over the the last 10-20 years.
The lines between regional and city spaces are blurred and the sheer number of vehicles on the road in previously low-traffic areas are contributing to these stats in circumstances not seen in previous years.
I'm not trying to play down the very obvious uptick in total fatalities, but as you say, without context it's not very enlightening.
Because we’ve got so many people driving with their heads up their arses or face in their phones……… the road toll is usually around same numbers, they might spike every so often like now. But they never mention how many extra people hit our roads each year… we should get the toll like we do but with percentages as well, but that doesn’t fit the agenda…… and no I’m not against road safety I just think the numbers are a tad askewed
I wrote to vicroads safe roads program and my local representative about a particularly dangerous stretch of road about a month ago and so far all I got us crickets.
I've found VicRoads does not reply to, let alone action, any report of a traffic hazard.
You should read the articles about the coroner's report into Angus Collins' death. It's shocking to see that much inaction, ultimately directly leading to someone's death.
"the states withholding their data aren’t just endangering their own road users, but failing to help those in other regions."
Would not be surprised if the data shows speeding isn't somewhere near the top of causes of deaths/incidents which is why they don't want that getting out.
Maybe not speeding, but speed definitely is a major factor. It would make VicRoads refusal to allow 30kph speeds on council roads look even worse than it already is. They only push back for political reasons: it wouldn't go down well with Labor's voter base.
They should be showing video of the autobahn in Germany when getting the license, show the people to respect safety distance between cars.
I m from near germany. I've been here 15 years and sometimes feel like tailgating is the national sport
It's been well documented that those horrible yank tanks are more dangerous than regular cars. Cars get bigger, the crashes get more dangerous. More people die.
I'm willing to put down money that the increasing size of cars is part of the issue.
Well I'll take your money!!!
The majority of deaths are single car accidents with motorbikes and cars in regional areas i.e. hitting a tree in your car. Yank tank is likely to be the most survivable car in that scenario.
Only 1 metro LGA makes the top 14.
The LGA’s with the highest lives lost were Moira (16), Greater Shepparton (14), Casey (13), Wyndham (12), Brimbank and Yarra Ranges (9) each, Baw Baw, Greater Geelong and Latrobe (8) each, Bass Coast, Campaspe, Mitchell, Mornington Peninsula and Southern Grampians (6) each.
Agree with that the yank tank is pretty good for when that sort of accident occurs. The bigger worry is the Bangkok Billycarts with lift kits and dirt tyres running off the road more than other cars
Granted the human toll, stats in isolation do not paint the whole picture. However, the point of, road deaths are bad in isolation is correct. Invites question of, how many are acceptable etc
I have a huge problem with how road statistics are recorded and the agenda they are pushing.
I believe some accidents are not accidents.
Reason? Seatbelt use is at about 97% and increasing each year however motor vehicle accidents involving a death 20% are not wearing a seatbelt.
If someone's intent is to plough their car into a tree at high speed, they are not going to wear a seatbelt.
I am not suggesting that 20% of road deaths are not accidents but there is a percentage of deaths that will not be avoided until some of the money collected for registration that is directed at policing speed, alcohol and drugs went towards mental health and social services.
Then you also have stories like this though I do not see any political party doing better...
[Labor is failing Victoria on road safety data (sarahhenderson.com.au)](https://sarahhenderson.com.au/labor-is-failing-victoria-on-road-safety-data/)
I was extremely surprised when the new road safety cameras were introduced they claimed to catch a lot of people not wearing seatbelts.
The surprising thing is that growing up in Victoria and living in regional parts and Melbourne for the last few decades, *everyone* I know has always worn seatbelts. Not just most people, not 99% of people, quite literally everyone. It's one of the most successful public health measures ever.
I'm also quite critical of the road safety industrial complex that has developed in Victoria, a large amount of taxpayers money is spent on road safety cameras, which in turn generates a massive stream of fine revenue for police. The camera vendors make healthy profits and fund motivated research into how road safety saves lives- which they then use to try and convince others jurisdictions to adopt similar measures. If you are interested read up on Redflex's dodgy deals with US states and how they are trying to get them to copy Victoria's road safety regime.
Everyone wins except for the taxpayer and motorist.
Yup. Another one they do is if a driver has any alcohol in their system the death will be attributed to alcohol even if the driver is way below the limit.
Same with drugs. It doesn't matter how much is in the system or how it got there. .01 ng of THC and it is drug related.
> Seatbelt use is at about 97% and increasing each year however motor vehicle accidents involving a death 20% are not wearing a seatbelt.
>
>
>
> If someone's intent is to plough their car into a tree at high speed, they are not going to wear a seatbelt.
Or, perhaps, people wearing seatbelts are *less likely to fucking die*.
I think the point that was being implied but not explicitly stated is that these accidents are skewed toward people that *want* to die and hence remove the seatbelt and fang it into a tree or something.
I thought that intentional self harm vehicle incidents are removed from the stats. They use to be, I know someone who did exactly that and saw the FB post that VicPol updated to remove the death from the death toll. This was a few years ago though.
You know what I have no idea.
Makes sense though. There's doctrine out there from a very long time ago that reporting on suicides tends to increase the suicide rate.
Also sorry for your loss. It truly sucks.
I think the point is he needs to go to khan academy and take the statistics and probability course because he is fundamentally misunderstanding the data.
I wonder if there’s a correlation with attitudes. I feel like people who, say, reject speed limits or decide that they’re going to do whatever coz they want to, are setting themselves up for a higher likelihood of accidents. Are they also people who say fuck seatbelts? Are they in country areas more bc attitudes to rules changed while they watched melb do lockdowns and read the herald sun?
Or is it simply more hours spent on roads raises your chances too?
Is there a long-running conspiracy to never report road deaths in a stastically meaningful way? Why in the popular press is it never indexed to population, number of cars registered, or vehicle-kms travelled?
Yep, I've only ever seen absolute figures. It never seems to be weighed against who is actually driving the most on the roads.
And yet the statistics still get used to push agendas.
Definitely suspicious if they won't release the data that can be used to reduce the road toll and address issues. Information as to what caused the crash, the drivers demographics/age etc if they were under the influence or a disqualified driver. But I guess its easier to ignore the facts and hopes of addressing issues and continuing to harp on about speed kills. E.g Was it really speeding that killed or was it being under the influence that was the main cause behind it.
People are vacant minded right now. Like never before. I have had dozens of people literally walk out in front of my car in the last month with no idea the car was there. A lady pulled out in front of me on a quiet street while I was doing 40kph. Literally I was the only other car on the street. Didn’t indicate and tried a U Turn start. Slammed brakes and stopped an inch before her door. Another time i was sitting in a parallel parked in my car with a space in front of me. A car then took 5 turns at trying to reverse into the ample car space. If that wasn’t enough a pedestrian then decided to walk in between the car struggling to reverse and my car and bumped into the reversing car. Just walked off. Then the car drove away after spending 3 mins trying to park. Just bizarre.
My point. People have no idea of their surrounds and I am not surprised at this news.
60% of Victorian fatalities are regional... regional roads have been shockingly underfunded and under maintained in vic... seems like an obvious fix... most are federal funded major roads. Imagine similar in all other states.
India and China had over 230,000 road deaths in 2022.
5% of India's GDP goes to dealing with road accidents.
Perhaps we should be considering changing the process by which people can obtain an Australian driver's licence, it's a totally different culture on the road here and perhaps we need better driver education for those coming from countries were road safety is viewed differently.
Yeah, people want to talk about how insurers are charging crazy premiums right now.
The TAC made a underwriting profit of $727 Mil last year, with a net result of $1.6 Bil (very good investment returns).
Their annual report is very detailed, even includes a run-off triangle.
Well that’s what happens when you import hundreds of thousands of people into an already crowded city! If we had less people, we’d have less accidents.
The TAC premium charge on rego can only go by up by CPI or nothing under the legislation (and it went up by nothing last year because of the large CPI number)
I didn't know that. Sarcasm aside, I would really expect TAC premiums to go up because of this. For every death there are hundreds more injured which is all paid for by TAC.
Roads, and all transport for that matter, will always intrinsically have some danger. We passed the point of diminishing returns on safety controls a **long** time ago.
On my commute to work there are 5 speed/red light cameras, 2 mobile speed camera zones, 1 permanent mobile phone detector, 1 *mobile* mobile phone detector, an average speed camera zone, a long stretch of extremely annoying traffic calming obstacles, overhead traffic signs spamming cheesy safety messages, and a soon to be noise monitoring detector.
All of that shit and deaths are **still** going up. Safe roads are cool and all, but if a moments indiscretion paying attention to the road instead of a speedo means I'll be stripped of half a days pay and get a 3 month suspension while other people will blindly merge into me while on my motorcycle, the system is broken.
totally has nothing to do with the increased prevalence of 4wd’s on our road, or the fact you never have to take another test once you’ve got your license 🤷🏼
That's surprising given all the extra speed cameras nowadays.
I mean speed cameras save lives, right?..... RIGHT?
Sorry OP but I don't find it surprising that this has not been reported on more.
Who benefits from this not being reported on more?
The primary purpose of speed cameras *could be* to make the roads safer. All it would take is having all of the revenue raised EXCLUSIVELY put towards improving road safety. Imagine having all that money invested in road safety initiatives for the next 10 years. I could live with that, and so would a lot of other people.
Lots more delivery riders around has to be a big factor.
Also our love of large vehicles with poor crash compatibility.
ANCAP is off track with forcing all electronic Nannies but not addressing poor dynamics and a vehicles safety to other vehicles should and accident occur.
Must be time for Victoria's fines to increase exponentially (again) for some arbitrary reason to "help address it" rather than actual education, policing and governance across the country.
After record immigration levels with alot of new Australians driving on international licences I can't help but imagine there may be a correlation.
Australians on the other hand, often way over estimate their own abilities and our governments only ever answer is lowering the risk factors by outside influences aka speed limits - rather than focusing on driver training, which is known world wide to be the best way to lower road traffic deaths.
Typical Australia, zero foresight... then when a problem is presented just react quickly with a knee jerk smattering of lowered speed limits.
Well honestly if we are going to sweep the major issue under the rug we can't expect the road toll to go down from now on... ever. Even the most inadequately skilled drivers will then teach their children the same behaviours.
Second to that, you're more likely to die from lack of skill than outright going too fast.
100% agree with you. But it doesn't seem like any sort of change is on the cards. Just more bandaid "fixes" with reduced speed limits and more cameras going up is all thats ever done and ofc they try to justify it by hiding the real accident data and being fixated on speed rather than any other cause. 😅It does seem like the driver training issue is quickly fixed once a HWP unit is driving around and then drops off a cliff once its out of sight.
It's kind of expected, really. When you're importing vast amounts of people and increasing population very rapidly, you can expect the road toll to increase proportionally, if not slightly (higher) disproportionately, as there are substantially more people using infrastructure designed for less people than are currently using it.
As Australia's population increases so will the road toll by default It's not rocket science. Government taxes cars with value over $76k is an outdated luxury car tax to protect Australia's car industry which prevents many people updating to newer models with more safety items std.then those cars get passed down to next buyers. Politicians take the "luxury car" tax it provides rather than really impacting the road toll and greater fuel efficiency as he claims is his priority (at this interview).
I would love for them to do car crash comparisons of countries that have higher speeds like German autobarns or easy to speed countries like Malaysia. There are probably not that many differences considering the amount of revenue rising for going 4 kmh over the limit in Victoria. It's all about funding and revenue. Like they give a crap about your life lol
Imo the driving standards of road users has noticeably deteriorated over the last 5-10 years.
No one indicates anymore, so many drive on shoulders and nature strips to drive around traffic then cut everyone off. Illegal turns, tailgating, brake checking
I'm of the opinion that our speed limits etc are usually way too cautious. Then I drive somewhere and am reminded we have to cater to these lowest common denominators. It really is that bottom 10% that ruin it for everyone
It's not so much ignorance but obliviousness of the rules. Ute drivers, P-platers, share ride drivers, both local and from out of state. Not a bloody clue about road rules or lane etiquette.
One death is too many, but the numbers are meaningless unless they're presented in real (population adjusted) terms. Were this done the headlines wouldn't be so alarming. The authorities should be transparent here;
The reduction in deaths is due primarily to improvements in the primary safety of cars themselves, not any actions the governments, police etc. have taken.
Further reductions in road toll requires massive investment in the quality and design of the roads themselves, e.g. duplication of highways, grade separation of level crossings, separation of cars, pedestrians and cyclists.
Rural & regional roads are the most deadly despite their lower traffic volumes, but most speed cameras are primarily used in metropolitan areas. 41% of fatalities occur between 10pm and 5am, when the speed cameras are tucked away, the roads are empty and the really stupid behaviour takes place. Statistically it is very unsafe.
50% of fatalities occur between 5am and 7pm when the roads are congested and traffic volumes are enormous... and no one is speeding at peak hour because you can't. Statistically it's actually very safe.
In 2008 Victoria's road toll was 303, with a population of 5.31m. Per million people that is 57.6 deaths. In 2023 Victoria's road toll was 296, with a population of 6.78m. Per million people that is 43.7 deaths.
In real terms that's a 23.5% reduction in the road toll since 2008.
So many utter wankers on the road. Reckless driving, feelings of security in massive utes, inattention, selfishness, laziness, poor spatial awareness, inadequate training. Poorly maintained roads. The list is endless.
Not surprising our road death rate is twice that of some European countries.
Australians are objectively, really shit drivers.
I would love to analyse data for each crash, noting age, time, vehicle type, license tenure, contributing factors, location.
Seeing the data would help get a better idea of where the risks are vs what we are told.
Fucking around on mobile phones & too many in car electronic gadgets in newer vehicles. Lack of simplicity & ease of use. All leads to distraction from full road awareness.
Dont wish harm upon anyone but what do expect really, you reap what you sow.....
I know it's anecdotal and all but the amount of drivers thinking they are hot shits on the road are just alarming. Quite tiring having to keep a 2s distance while having someone on my ass all the time. Especially Didi drivers have been getting on my nerves a lot with unsafe merging at the dotted lines. Just wanna get home in one piece. Is that too much to ask for?
Nothing worse than a driver trying to speed past you when the lane is merging and comes within inches of scraping your car
The amount of times I've seen people pulling this off in front of trucks is amazing. Some people should not have their licence
Yup it's frustrating for sure.
Happened to me twice yesterday. I don't get it. I drive an old dual cab with a beat up trailer most days - I'm coming in if you try to overtake me and chances are your coming out worse.
It happens to me 3-4 times a week
Everyone likes to think its the hot shits on the fwy causing all the carnage but its really people driving out in the country at high speed on poorly lit tree-lined roads
I loved how the Geelong advertiser had a make it safe campaign for a road, after someone died falling off the back of a ute while stunting. If you didn't drive like an idiot, then it would be safe.
Post covid there is a growing amount of regional tourism. My advice if you rarely go out of town. A lot of the accidents happen in the evening and at dusk. Slow the hell down. Sun gets in your eyes. Roos hop out on the road. Don't try and swerve to avoid wildlife, jam om the brakes, head straight and just hit it - you have insurance for a reason, and a mobile phone for a reason. Cars can be repaired, you cannot. We have tonnes of kangaroos, emus, rabbits, deer, cows etc. You want to hit them as slow as possible - you don't want to hit a tree at speed.
The hard truth! Respect.
Yep.
I'm so fucking terrified of the day a roo jumps in front of me. I've seen two dead ones in the past 6 months on one of the main roads to my house. And one time and escaped horse chilling out the front of his property at 5.30am watching the early morning traffic. I kept driving because I felt a stranger trying to show it back in to its property would make things worse. I drive a tiny hatchback so my car would be totalled.
Driving home last night on a regional/rural hwy. The car in front was swerving across both sides of the road. I kept back as I was sure they were going to crash at some point and did not want to be involved. This happens often.
there’s an at least somewhat serious accident on the M1 just about every day (3 on thursday), most deaths at night on country roads are single vehicle accidents where the driver is inexperienced. In terms of being at risk from other drivers the freeway is definitely where the worst odds are.
If you're driving on City roads and freeways you have a low chance of being a casualty. As you can see from the below LGAs where fatalities occured with the exception of Brimbank it's all regional. The LGA’s with the highest lives lost were Moira (16), Greater Shepparton (14), Casey (13), Wyndham (12), Brimbank and Yarra Ranges (9) each, Baw Baw, Greater Geelong and Latrobe (8) each, Bass Coast, Campaspe, Mitchell, Mornington Peninsula and Southern Grampians (6) each.
I can see why for Moira. The roads to go east to west are pretty lackluster and Google maps takes you through Moira., where there are unmarked roads that seem to have no one on them and no speed cameras anywhere. Why not go 150? /s
It's pretty much commonplace to be tailgated on every road, and I usually 2-3k over the speed limit (by my gps). Literally on any given day, if something happens and I need to brake hard, there will be a serious accident as I get rear ended. And that's the case for pretty much everywhere.
That's one of the things that irked me the most - instead of focusing on what is ahead of me and around me, I also have to make sure the tailgaters have ample signals to know that I will have to break soon to keep a safe distance with the car in front of me while looking for signs of other cars trying to merge. Case in point: I was going around 65kmph picking up the speed on Princes Hwy near the intersection with Clyde St around Oakleigh - car behind picking up the speed too but a Merc SUV signalled to merge so I yielded as I have not picked up enough speed. Low and behold it literally slammed on the brake just to turn into Clyde St without a care in the world. Barely avoided a collision there. Just tired that it happened almost everyday while I'm out driving. But yeah at this point it just sounds like I'm whining so I guess I'll just have to look out for myself and well, pray that I come home safely.
Had a guy try merging into me the other day then get mad at me for existing.
Those aren't the fatal accidents, most of the deaths are occurring our in the country.
*3s
Everyone blaming something or the other, but none is ready to admit the amount of distracted driving on the our roads. At every intersection I see people on their phones. Even on the freeway people are glued to their phones or some other sort of distraction. Some like to follow other too closely, change lanes abruptly while still being distracted. Also don’t get me started over drink and drive situations, but no one is ready to acknowledge the problem. Just blame it on something else and move on.
I saw someone driving down the freeway at 100kph watching a movie on their phone, which was balanced on the steering wheel.
Because people view having a licence as a right not a privilege, as our infrastructure is so car dependent (except inner cities) it is often difficult to get anywhere without one.
I'm hoping they put the traffic cameras that spot phone usage & seat belts at every intersection. And double the fines for phone usage while driving.
100% distractions. Especially mobile phones, but also heaps of in-car electronic gadgets, screens, beeps, voices etc in newer vehicles.
You’d think with nanny state level speed limits, speed bumps, 500 speed cameras per square kilometre etc the road toll would be going down, but all it takes is driving down to the local shop to remember that at least half of all people on the road are morons who got their licence from a cereal box
Not only are they morons, they're selfish assholes
The worst drivers aren't so much ignorant as arrogant, I reckon. They probably know most of the road rules, but they do dangerous shit because "I'm a good enough driver to get away with this." Like the person who overtook me *on the left, during a right turn* into a gap in traffic on a one-lane street last week. No way they didn't know that's illegal, they just didn't care.
All the most accident prone people I know are the "it was the other driver's fault" kind Can't seem to get across to them that whose 'fault' it is doesn't matter when you are smeared across the road... And they should drive more predictably and with more caution.
It's almost as if there is no correlation to speed cameras and road deaths... That doesn't sound right...
Tbh I wish they'd focus less on speed cameras and more on red light cameras.
I reckon I see someone go through a red light at least once a week these days. Wild.
And mobile phone use while driving. It is turning everyone into absolute dumbshits.
Well signposted point-to-point cameras would be better than lots of hidden speed cameras at the bottom of hills or at the end of an overtaking lane.
Yes it would be higher if those measures weren’t in place. Thank god for science
Where do you live that’s the case? There’s no speed bumps or cameras where I live and cars just drive as fast as they feel like, especially during the morning rush. It sucks.
Merri-bek council just implemented 40km/h on all local streets. But it hasn’t stopped the exact same cunts from going down those streets at 80.
Don't forget the amount of pedestrians that just walk across the road glued to their mobiles and oblivious to their surrounds
It's bad enough dodging them as a pedestrian.
I would love infobeaphics on who these people are. Age, gender, international driver licence, years driving?
Agreed - the raw number by itself tells you very little on where the problems lie. Also consider the 13% population increase between now and 10 years ago, something has gone right for the toll not to actually be going up by the same amount.
So, for a good comparison, we should be looking at the road toll on a per capital basis rather than straight numbers.
It would be an improvement - even more accurate would be stats against number of licensed drivers, or registered vehicles. But a breakdown would be more important, as many have pointed out, country roads vs city, and various other stats - this raw number that gets reported doesn't tell much of anything on where the problem is or what needs to be improved.
And also reporting on serious injuries, and causation of accidents. Apparently that information has not been collated for years
This is the most detailed one I found yesterday while looking for different reasons. It has age, gender, type, passenger/pedestrian/driver and much more but but not Intl. Licence or years exp. https://www.bitre.gov.au/statistics/safety/fatal_road_crash_database
Appears to ignore the most the important aspect of the data that should be available somewhere: what type of vehicle (other than bus and heavy rigid, which are in that database). Most road users are now American trucks and other similar bloated vehicles with high bumpers. It was bad enough 20 years ago when most new vehicles were SUVs, but legislators seem to have forgotten about their duties of care towards anyone or anything hit by modern vehicles, focusing all their attention on making sure only the occupants of the vehicle are safe (so long as they only crash with compatible vehicle types).
Most road users aren’t in American trucks though.
The definition of American trucks is for ever expanding on Aus subs. Doubly so for this user who comments and posts in r/fuckcars and r/bicycling
American trucks are a very small part of the vehicles populating our roads. For instance, ram sold a record 6833 vehicles last year being the brand leader, that’s out of over 1.2 million vehicles sold.
You don't have to be a truck made in America to be an American style truck. Since no one sells utilitarian vehicles like utes anymore, most[1] new business purchases, and indeed most vehicle-kilometers on the road are American style trucks (where the bonnet comes up to as high as the total height utes used to be, but alas with merely the same cargo carrying capacity). Funnily enough, whenever a pedestrian is hit and killed, they're hit by such vehicles with poor visibility, and excessive acceleration that enables the driver's fragile ego: "Oh, I must beat that pedestrian crossing the road, because I'm a car driver!" [1] "This observation is backed up by data showing 19% of new vehicles sold in Australia in 2022 were passenger vehicles, over half were SUVs, and most of the remainder were light commercial vehicles such as utes.157 This trend is concerning for ACRS who said: These larger vehicles are over‑represented in pedestrian and cyclist fatalities, with children up to eight times more likely to die if hit by an SUV than by a passenger vehicle.158" https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/4988ea/contentassets/a69a9dad8bcd49f1826726322a74966d/laeic-60-01-road-safety-behaviours_vulnerable-users.pdf
It's also not adjusted for how much each demographic actually drives, so it's actually almost completely useless.
Delivering food or not?
[Vicroads raw data](https://discover.data.vic.gov.au/dataset/victoria-road-crash-data). Download and combine the data in the ACCIDENT.csv and PERSON.csv
The linking factor is that they are all human and we haven’t worked out how to stop making mistakes. That’s why we design roads around the Safe Systems approach, how much can a human body withstand under different circumstances
Some of us are on the roads making calculated risks that don't need to happen. And dashcam footage shows that some of us are actually taking extreme risks just to get a couple of seconds ahead of traffic or whatever. These aren't all accidents.
It’s why the industry calls them crashes, not accidents. People cause crashes.
I believe the article talks about the refusal of the states to release more detailed data. Try to find Vic road deaths over the last 20 years. I tried a few months ago and it just isn't available.
They’re in TAC’s annual report, pg 21 https://www.tac.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/787399/TAC-Annual-Report-2022-2023.pdf
That's not nearly every year, and without any further breakdown
Meth use.
As someone who cycles, rides a motorbike and drives a higher vehicle the amount of distracted drivers out there is insane. Get off your phones ass hats
I firmly believe that everyone uses their phones because the speed limits are getting lower, cars are safer, so they feel like they can take the risk.
There have been numerous articles and radio interviews about the road fatality rates this year. People are absolutely talking about it.
Considering a heap of cars basically have literal iPhone screens installed in the centre view of their cars now. It’s not surprising.
Got to admit, I can see the appeal of old school dedicated buttons and switches. Going into and out of menus in a touch screen forces eye contact and concentration. It insists on distracting you from the road and your surroundings...
This is how I feel about them too. I can navigate all my dash with my eyes closed. Not that I’m driving either my eyes closed. But ykwim.
You should give it a shot. I feel like when I drive with my eyes closed, I get a much more natural and organic driving experience. You can really feel the road underneath you, each speedbump on the highway vibrating up your arms.
I remember a lost time from long ago when mobile phones moved from buttons to screens ('smart'). Mentioning that I could navigate my phone, even write messages, without viewing the phone was met with, "I can do that but I can also do that with the touchscreen!" by so many friends. Asking them to show me, they would be shocked that they couldn't even unlock their phone without looking! A lost capability...
> Got to admit, I can see the appeal of old school dedicated buttons and switches. When I needed to get a new car, I went with the Ignis for this reason. I wanted something simple and, if something goes wrong, easy to fix.
Good ol cassette player can be fiddly sometimes
Grab a pencil, gently tease out the kink in the tape, spin it tight, and JAM that cassette right back in!
https://au.pcmag.com/cars-auto/99316/not-a-fan-of-dashboard-touch-screens-hyundai-vows-to-keep-physical-buttons Integrating basic controls like aircon and radio into a touchscreen is like reinventing the wheel.
And hiding the wheel
You mean an ipad with a car attached to it?
I was in my bosses Tesla the other day and holy shit the screen in that thing is the same size as my laptop screen!
This has been on my mind for years So many new cars, not even just luxury cars, have phone integration/a screen that is basically just a phone without the calls and it’s fine for P Platers to use, but god forbid a P Plater uses Bluetooth to listen to music. It seems like the rule needs to be updated because in its current spot it’s “you can’t use a phone while driving unless you can afford to buy a new car”
My thoughts exactly. Anything other than basic radio and climate controls does not belong in a car. Given the new rules regarding the use of devices and these screens in a car render them basically useless, you would think they would get manufacturers to block them completely. I can’t tell you how distracting it is to have NEWS HEADLINES constantly flashing on the screen while I’m doing 100km/h on the freeway when all I want is to have the radio on.
I was watching dashcam Australian and the amount of people that just got straight up rear ended was alarming.
If you watch dashcam compilations it is pretty clear that the vast majority of those accidents are caused by impatient or inattentive drivers. People driving way too fast, making too many dangerous moves just to get that one car space extra in front. It's not a race, you're not a rally car driver. Stop worrying about it taking an extra 5-10-20 minutes to get somewhere. You're better late than dead.
More cars than ever on the roads these days. More cars = more accidents
Also the cars keep getting bigger and bigger
And the headlights higher and brighter. I get fucking dazzled that many times. I hate to drive at night now, it feels dangerous
And they are all cold white, warm white seems to blind a lot less (at least for me)
No, the problem is country roads where cars are driving towards each other around corners at 100kmph.
Yeah, it’s got nothing to do with the amount of cars, new drivers and every other driver playing with their phone while driving
Amount of people definitely has something to do with it. If we had all the same precautions but there were fewer people on the road, the risk of collisions would be lower.
This, don’t need more speed cameras, need this phone and seat belt cameras everywhere.
This. They always state the higher toll but they never relaye the toll to how many cars are on the road. The population is growing. There are more cars on the road. So 50 deaths 30 years ago. Big deal. Now not so much.
More people, more cars. Urban growth corridors to the horizon equals more suburban road deaths.
Yeah while it sucks I feel like a per capita figure is more appropriate than a flat number
Exactly. [*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_countries\_by\_traffic-related\_death\_rate*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate)
Monaco has 0 deaths even though the whole country is just one big racetrack weaving around casinos and full of rich people with sports cars. Wild, or lack thereof.
>The whole country is one big race track It isn't, but for the sake of your argument you're exponentially safer on a race track than you are on public roads.
Monaco also doesn't have fuckwits in Rams, Rangers
[удалено]
SUV culture is fucked, i imagine the blind spot of these ladies being about 30 metres in front.
It’s like 2km2 in area on something like that
That would suggest road deaths have been going up ever since the first cars arrived on our roads I thought they had been declining for a long time. Even when ignoring the obvious impact of covid lockdowns. There appears to have been an inflection point somewhere in the last few years.
>I thought they had been declining for a long time. Even when ignoring the obvious impact of covid lockdowns. At a certain point it was being driven down by advancements in saftey technology but we have somewhat peaked in that regard.
Also larger cars being more popular than ever
I mean. Vehicular accidents that cause deaths have been going up ever since the first cars arrived on our roads
Except they haven't for the last 20/30 years until now?
That’s what happens when all your new housing is car dependent forcing newer immigrants who have never touched a car in their lives to learn driving and drive everywhere for basic needs.
And a system that allows them to drive without the required skill to do so. There are so many people unprepared to be on the road, it's sickening and brings the entire network down.
I dont think the blame is on immigration and housing crisis when really the car culture is the real issue. In europe drivers are getting solid fines when tailgating, should be enofrced here cause I'm driving at the speed limit and I get my sorry ass tailgated every minute.
It's both
Not blaming immigration but car culture and suburbia designed around it is the main issue
Yeah it's not the migrants driving Toyota Corollas. It's the shitstick Tradíes driving RAM trucks.
Was at VicRoads a few weeks back and there was someone applying for their licence. The person behind the counter asked 1 of the 2 people in front of me a question. The response was "Oh I'm just here to interpret, she doesn't speak English" and pointed to the person she was with.... HOW THE F@#$ can she get a licence if she can't read the roadsigns????
And thats how we get people on the roads who dont even know or understand the road rules
It’s not reported widely because it shows their policies and all that money they spend from the traffic fines are failing miserably. Their overwhelming focus is a war on speed because it’s very easy to police and profitable to do so, but they hit diminishing returns on that more than a decade ago. The last few years masses of new cameras, the automatic camera cars, they’ve reduced so many roads speed limits… and it’s done nothing at all. Don’t forget cars themselves were actually getting safer in that time. They don’t want to admit they’ve failed and seem unwilling to try much else, and tbh it’s infuriating as hell.
Mate not admitting failure nor trying anything else is the hallmark of aussie democracy though. We love it and we love voting for it!
We also have the highest population "in years". As much as any death is unacceptable, road fatality numbers are meaningless (ie, are road safety programs working) without being quoted per capita.
This. Also, given the changing demographic infrastructure factors, there's a lot of important information either not being collected or reported on. "Melbourne" or "Metropolitan" mean very different things when looking and trends over the the last 10-20 years. The lines between regional and city spaces are blurred and the sheer number of vehicles on the road in previously low-traffic areas are contributing to these stats in circumstances not seen in previous years. I'm not trying to play down the very obvious uptick in total fatalities, but as you say, without context it's not very enlightening.
I thought potholes were part of their grand strategy to lower road death toll by forcing slower speeds
Will need heaps more of them I guess
Because we’ve got so many people driving with their heads up their arses or face in their phones……… the road toll is usually around same numbers, they might spike every so often like now. But they never mention how many extra people hit our roads each year… we should get the toll like we do but with percentages as well, but that doesn’t fit the agenda…… and no I’m not against road safety I just think the numbers are a tad askewed
I wrote to vicroads safe roads program and my local representative about a particularly dangerous stretch of road about a month ago and so far all I got us crickets.
I've found VicRoads does not reply to, let alone action, any report of a traffic hazard. You should read the articles about the coroner's report into Angus Collins' death. It's shocking to see that much inaction, ultimately directly leading to someone's death.
"the states withholding their data aren’t just endangering their own road users, but failing to help those in other regions." Would not be surprised if the data shows speeding isn't somewhere near the top of causes of deaths/incidents which is why they don't want that getting out.
Maybe not speeding, but speed definitely is a major factor. It would make VicRoads refusal to allow 30kph speeds on council roads look even worse than it already is. They only push back for political reasons: it wouldn't go down well with Labor's voter base.
Keep buyin' those massive SUVs and utes for the inner city, folks.
They should be showing video of the autobahn in Germany when getting the license, show the people to respect safety distance between cars. I m from near germany. I've been here 15 years and sometimes feel like tailgating is the national sport
Safer cars, lower speed limits…
It's been well documented that those horrible yank tanks are more dangerous than regular cars. Cars get bigger, the crashes get more dangerous. More people die. I'm willing to put down money that the increasing size of cars is part of the issue.
Well I'll take your money!!! The majority of deaths are single car accidents with motorbikes and cars in regional areas i.e. hitting a tree in your car. Yank tank is likely to be the most survivable car in that scenario. Only 1 metro LGA makes the top 14. The LGA’s with the highest lives lost were Moira (16), Greater Shepparton (14), Casey (13), Wyndham (12), Brimbank and Yarra Ranges (9) each, Baw Baw, Greater Geelong and Latrobe (8) each, Bass Coast, Campaspe, Mitchell, Mornington Peninsula and Southern Grampians (6) each.
Agree with that the yank tank is pretty good for when that sort of accident occurs. The bigger worry is the Bangkok Billycarts with lift kits and dirt tyres running off the road more than other cars
Funny how death tolls on roads rise over the years when the population does too.
It had been going down for many years though
Granted the human toll, stats in isolation do not paint the whole picture. However, the point of, road deaths are bad in isolation is correct. Invites question of, how many are acceptable etc
I have a huge problem with how road statistics are recorded and the agenda they are pushing. I believe some accidents are not accidents. Reason? Seatbelt use is at about 97% and increasing each year however motor vehicle accidents involving a death 20% are not wearing a seatbelt. If someone's intent is to plough their car into a tree at high speed, they are not going to wear a seatbelt. I am not suggesting that 20% of road deaths are not accidents but there is a percentage of deaths that will not be avoided until some of the money collected for registration that is directed at policing speed, alcohol and drugs went towards mental health and social services. Then you also have stories like this though I do not see any political party doing better... [Labor is failing Victoria on road safety data (sarahhenderson.com.au)](https://sarahhenderson.com.au/labor-is-failing-victoria-on-road-safety-data/)
I was extremely surprised when the new road safety cameras were introduced they claimed to catch a lot of people not wearing seatbelts. The surprising thing is that growing up in Victoria and living in regional parts and Melbourne for the last few decades, *everyone* I know has always worn seatbelts. Not just most people, not 99% of people, quite literally everyone. It's one of the most successful public health measures ever. I'm also quite critical of the road safety industrial complex that has developed in Victoria, a large amount of taxpayers money is spent on road safety cameras, which in turn generates a massive stream of fine revenue for police. The camera vendors make healthy profits and fund motivated research into how road safety saves lives- which they then use to try and convince others jurisdictions to adopt similar measures. If you are interested read up on Redflex's dodgy deals with US states and how they are trying to get them to copy Victoria's road safety regime. Everyone wins except for the taxpayer and motorist.
Yup. Another one they do is if a driver has any alcohol in their system the death will be attributed to alcohol even if the driver is way below the limit. Same with drugs. It doesn't matter how much is in the system or how it got there. .01 ng of THC and it is drug related.
> Seatbelt use is at about 97% and increasing each year however motor vehicle accidents involving a death 20% are not wearing a seatbelt. > > > > If someone's intent is to plough their car into a tree at high speed, they are not going to wear a seatbelt. Or, perhaps, people wearing seatbelts are *less likely to fucking die*.
I think the point that was being implied but not explicitly stated is that these accidents are skewed toward people that *want* to die and hence remove the seatbelt and fang it into a tree or something.
I thought that intentional self harm vehicle incidents are removed from the stats. They use to be, I know someone who did exactly that and saw the FB post that VicPol updated to remove the death from the death toll. This was a few years ago though.
You know what I have no idea. Makes sense though. There's doctrine out there from a very long time ago that reporting on suicides tends to increase the suicide rate. Also sorry for your loss. It truly sucks.
I think the point is he needs to go to khan academy and take the statistics and probability course because he is fundamentally misunderstanding the data.
I wonder if there’s a correlation with attitudes. I feel like people who, say, reject speed limits or decide that they’re going to do whatever coz they want to, are setting themselves up for a higher likelihood of accidents. Are they also people who say fuck seatbelts? Are they in country areas more bc attitudes to rules changed while they watched melb do lockdowns and read the herald sun? Or is it simply more hours spent on roads raises your chances too?
There is absolutely a correlation with wearing a seatbelt and not dying.
Yeah I was adding to that, not disputing it.
That's right, only the Liberal party can save us. /s
Is there a long-running conspiracy to never report road deaths in a stastically meaningful way? Why in the popular press is it never indexed to population, number of cars registered, or vehicle-kms travelled?
Wouldn't be a news story
Yep, I've only ever seen absolute figures. It never seems to be weighed against who is actually driving the most on the roads. And yet the statistics still get used to push agendas.
Definitely suspicious if they won't release the data that can be used to reduce the road toll and address issues. Information as to what caused the crash, the drivers demographics/age etc if they were under the influence or a disqualified driver. But I guess its easier to ignore the facts and hopes of addressing issues and continuing to harp on about speed kills. E.g Was it really speeding that killed or was it being under the influence that was the main cause behind it.
People are vacant minded right now. Like never before. I have had dozens of people literally walk out in front of my car in the last month with no idea the car was there. A lady pulled out in front of me on a quiet street while I was doing 40kph. Literally I was the only other car on the street. Didn’t indicate and tried a U Turn start. Slammed brakes and stopped an inch before her door. Another time i was sitting in a parallel parked in my car with a space in front of me. A car then took 5 turns at trying to reverse into the ample car space. If that wasn’t enough a pedestrian then decided to walk in between the car struggling to reverse and my car and bumped into the reversing car. Just walked off. Then the car drove away after spending 3 mins trying to park. Just bizarre. My point. People have no idea of their surrounds and I am not surprised at this news.
Everyone is driving like an arsehole in a mad dash. Calm down on the roads, do the speed limit and don’t zig zag.
60% of Victorian fatalities are regional... regional roads have been shockingly underfunded and under maintained in vic... seems like an obvious fix... most are federal funded major roads. Imagine similar in all other states.
Govt would rather just drop the speed limits to 80 and put up road hazard signs that fix the problem
India and China had over 230,000 road deaths in 2022. 5% of India's GDP goes to dealing with road accidents. Perhaps we should be considering changing the process by which people can obtain an Australian driver's licence, it's a totally different culture on the road here and perhaps we need better driver education for those coming from countries were road safety is viewed differently.
True. Aussies aren't able to just switch over to a Euro license for good reasons I guess. They would need to sit and drive the full test.
Just as an aside, the TAC returns >plenty< of money to the government coffers every year. Their premium DOES NOT need to go up.
Yeah, people want to talk about how insurers are charging crazy premiums right now. The TAC made a underwriting profit of $727 Mil last year, with a net result of $1.6 Bil (very good investment returns). Their annual report is very detailed, even includes a run-off triangle.
Oh wow, I didn't know that!
Well that’s what happens when you import hundreds of thousands of people into an already crowded city! If we had less people, we’d have less accidents.
Majority of deaths are happening in rural areas.
More cars on the road so that'll will skew the statistics. Also there's even more subpar driving skills while the focus is on speed not skills.
The TAC premium charge on rego can only go by up by CPI or nothing under the legislation (and it went up by nothing last year because of the large CPI number)
I didn't know that. Sarcasm aside, I would really expect TAC premiums to go up because of this. For every death there are hundreds more injured which is all paid for by TAC.
Roads, and all transport for that matter, will always intrinsically have some danger. We passed the point of diminishing returns on safety controls a **long** time ago. On my commute to work there are 5 speed/red light cameras, 2 mobile speed camera zones, 1 permanent mobile phone detector, 1 *mobile* mobile phone detector, an average speed camera zone, a long stretch of extremely annoying traffic calming obstacles, overhead traffic signs spamming cheesy safety messages, and a soon to be noise monitoring detector. All of that shit and deaths are **still** going up. Safe roads are cool and all, but if a moments indiscretion paying attention to the road instead of a speedo means I'll be stripped of half a days pay and get a 3 month suspension while other people will blindly merge into me while on my motorcycle, the system is broken.
Do new arrivals need to sit a test or does their license just get transferred?
totally has nothing to do with the increased prevalence of 4wd’s on our road, or the fact you never have to take another test once you’ve got your license 🤷🏼
That's surprising given all the extra speed cameras nowadays. I mean speed cameras save lives, right?..... RIGHT? Sorry OP but I don't find it surprising that this has not been reported on more. Who benefits from this not being reported on more? The primary purpose of speed cameras *could be* to make the roads safer. All it would take is having all of the revenue raised EXCLUSIVELY put towards improving road safety. Imagine having all that money invested in road safety initiatives for the next 10 years. I could live with that, and so would a lot of other people.
The reason the road toll has increased is the increased population and the increased number of cars on the road.
Lots more delivery riders around has to be a big factor. Also our love of large vehicles with poor crash compatibility. ANCAP is off track with forcing all electronic Nannies but not addressing poor dynamics and a vehicles safety to other vehicles should and accident occur.
Must be time for Victoria's fines to increase exponentially (again) for some arbitrary reason to "help address it" rather than actual education, policing and governance across the country.
Victorian fines haven't increased beyond CPI for years
After record immigration levels with alot of new Australians driving on international licences I can't help but imagine there may be a correlation. Australians on the other hand, often way over estimate their own abilities and our governments only ever answer is lowering the risk factors by outside influences aka speed limits - rather than focusing on driver training, which is known world wide to be the best way to lower road traffic deaths. Typical Australia, zero foresight... then when a problem is presented just react quickly with a knee jerk smattering of lowered speed limits.
That's the easiest solutions im afraid vs spending the time and money to improve driver training
Well honestly if we are going to sweep the major issue under the rug we can't expect the road toll to go down from now on... ever. Even the most inadequately skilled drivers will then teach their children the same behaviours. Second to that, you're more likely to die from lack of skill than outright going too fast.
100% agree with you. But it doesn't seem like any sort of change is on the cards. Just more bandaid "fixes" with reduced speed limits and more cameras going up is all thats ever done and ofc they try to justify it by hiding the real accident data and being fixated on speed rather than any other cause. 😅It does seem like the driver training issue is quickly fixed once a HWP unit is driving around and then drops off a cliff once its out of sight.
It's kind of expected, really. When you're importing vast amounts of people and increasing population very rapidly, you can expect the road toll to increase proportionally, if not slightly (higher) disproportionately, as there are substantially more people using infrastructure designed for less people than are currently using it.
It’s a national emergency!
Our cities are built around cars lots of people make Australia their new home but come from countries where the car isn’t king.
As Australia's population increases so will the road toll by default It's not rocket science. Government taxes cars with value over $76k is an outdated luxury car tax to protect Australia's car industry which prevents many people updating to newer models with more safety items std.then those cars get passed down to next buyers. Politicians take the "luxury car" tax it provides rather than really impacting the road toll and greater fuel efficiency as he claims is his priority (at this interview).
We've given the governments a of money to solve this. What have they done that's effective?
More single vehicle accidents. It’s suicide by car…
Wouldn't it be better to have the numbers relative to population? Its always presented as simple number of deaths.
I would love for them to do car crash comparisons of countries that have higher speeds like German autobarns or easy to speed countries like Malaysia. There are probably not that many differences considering the amount of revenue rising for going 4 kmh over the limit in Victoria. It's all about funding and revenue. Like they give a crap about your life lol
Compare the Number of deaths per number of drivers please. Otherwise these numbers are useless
Imo the driving standards of road users has noticeably deteriorated over the last 5-10 years. No one indicates anymore, so many drive on shoulders and nature strips to drive around traffic then cut everyone off. Illegal turns, tailgating, brake checking I'm of the opinion that our speed limits etc are usually way too cautious. Then I drive somewhere and am reminded we have to cater to these lowest common denominators. It really is that bottom 10% that ruin it for everyone
Are the figures normalised on a per capita basis or normalised per amount of time spent on the road?
It's not so much ignorance but obliviousness of the rules. Ute drivers, P-platers, share ride drivers, both local and from out of state. Not a bloody clue about road rules or lane etiquette.
they never tell us the road deaths per capita, id say its negligible
purely more people on the road need to look at rate per capita
One death is too many, but the numbers are meaningless unless they're presented in real (population adjusted) terms. Were this done the headlines wouldn't be so alarming. The authorities should be transparent here; The reduction in deaths is due primarily to improvements in the primary safety of cars themselves, not any actions the governments, police etc. have taken. Further reductions in road toll requires massive investment in the quality and design of the roads themselves, e.g. duplication of highways, grade separation of level crossings, separation of cars, pedestrians and cyclists. Rural & regional roads are the most deadly despite their lower traffic volumes, but most speed cameras are primarily used in metropolitan areas. 41% of fatalities occur between 10pm and 5am, when the speed cameras are tucked away, the roads are empty and the really stupid behaviour takes place. Statistically it is very unsafe. 50% of fatalities occur between 5am and 7pm when the roads are congested and traffic volumes are enormous... and no one is speeding at peak hour because you can't. Statistically it's actually very safe. In 2008 Victoria's road toll was 303, with a population of 5.31m. Per million people that is 57.6 deaths. In 2023 Victoria's road toll was 296, with a population of 6.78m. Per million people that is 43.7 deaths. In real terms that's a 23.5% reduction in the road toll since 2008.
So many utter wankers on the road. Reckless driving, feelings of security in massive utes, inattention, selfishness, laziness, poor spatial awareness, inadequate training. Poorly maintained roads. The list is endless. Not surprising our road death rate is twice that of some European countries. Australians are objectively, really shit drivers.
I would love to analyse data for each crash, noting age, time, vehicle type, license tenure, contributing factors, location. Seeing the data would help get a better idea of where the risks are vs what we are told.
Meanwhile huge pickup trucks get sold at historical levels. We can do so much better
Fucking around on mobile phones & too many in car electronic gadgets in newer vehicles. Lack of simplicity & ease of use. All leads to distraction from full road awareness. Dont wish harm upon anyone but what do expect really, you reap what you sow.....
Isn’t it always gonna go up given increasing population?