Tomorrow is Fatality Free Friday – an initiative to raise awareness about Australia’s roadtoll and greatly reduce it.

http://www.fatalityfreefriday.com/au/pdf/noticeboard.pdf

http://www.abc.net.au/news/photos/2009/05/14/2570470.htm

http://www.fatalityfreefriday.com/au/about/background/index.htm

For some strange reason the whole issue of road safety gets very little response on OLO. I’ve started new threads a number of times. The first received precisely no responses. The latest one I started four days ago has only two respondents apart from myself: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2775

So it seems that the greatest problem in dealing with our disgusting road toll is complacency. This is just extraordinary given the enormous consequences of road trauma for people, families, friends and society…and given what I will maintain are EASY solutions, if we could just put our collective minds to the task.

So, what do the good folk of OLO think about Fatality Free Friday or the issue of road safety overall?

oh dear how clever, fatality free day...lol
given that 3 times as many..[as die on the roads..]..die from work accidents every day..7,000 plus

and 2 times as many die from suicide
and 20 times from adverse events from drugs[19,000 per year just from smoking[near 4000 from booze..

cant we look at this road death issue in context?

its intresting govts..use revenue raising practices to oppress road death...that media flaunts it in our face...as prime news[when its not news but conditioning

[but now its got its own day...lol
[to celibrate the income [govt revenue]..it raises?

Dear Ludwig,

My husband and I lived in California
for close to ten years and both of us
learned to drive and obtained our driver's
licenses in Los Angeles.

Licenses in California are renewed
every three years and
a written test must be passed before the
license is re-issued. Citizens of pension
age have written tests every year.

Driver offences in most cases are punished
by sending the offender to driving school.

We found that driving in California and
generally in the US and Canada, for that matter
even in Mexico, was less stressful then in Australia.

For the first few years on our return to Australia
from the US, we were appalled at the state of driving
in Australia - and the mental attitude of drivers,
until we learned to treat everybody as
a potential hazard, and even then have been unable to
avoid minor accidents.

We should learn from the Californian system
and introduce far more vigorous testing of drivers
at regular times during their driving lifetime.

My husband has always said that he encountered
while driving in Los Angeles, one or two dangerous
drivers a month, in a city of 12 million people. Now
he encounters four or five a week in a city of
3.8 million.

My mother who is 88 and claims to have a perfect
driving record, despite her several accidents a
year, had her driver's license recently renewed
for another 10 years without any testing whatsoever.

It's time that the Government woke up to the ever
increasing condition on the roads and introduced
stringent regular testing.

Sorry Ludwig,

It is a nice thought but the public are used as a cash cow not a source of information and input on road safety. I don't build roads. I don't design cars. I can't change government policy on driver training. There isn't a great deal left when you take out those things. Sure a few people will top themselves from dope driving, drunk driving or hooning but even if I could stop them it wouldn't fix the main problems. Its a lot easier to just sit and watch governmental attempts to persuade us that speeding ticket revenue raising is a magic bullet that will some day work (or go to their website for more propaganda by following a link from those people you cited) than to rant in here without anything changing.

I'd add to one under god's comments that there is even less attributable to road accidents than there appear to be. A significant number of road fatalities would be suicides anyhow. It stands to reason that a male youth wanting to top himself would put his foot down and line up a tree. Most people don't have guns, and don't have access to the tops of buildings, and if they take pills they could end up getting their stomach pumped or end up just throwing them up and feeling sick which is pretty disgusting. The road approach would be an obvious thing but unless there is a suicide note it will be labelled speeding.

Foxy, your comment, 'treat everybody as a potential hazard', is very relevant in Australia.

I learned that during the time that motorcycles were my main means of transport. After surviving a very bad crash with surprisingly few injuries (caused by a ute that wanted to be where I was), I gave up two wheels. Love the freedom of the bike - not so the ambulance rides.

Drivers here don't look. Don't think. Have no idea of the basics of sharing the road. Courtesy - whats that?

What do you expect when it's so easy to obtain a licence here. The ridiculous system where no official test has to be passed as long as a log-book is completed is to blame. I know someone who went through a red light on his final check and still passed.

Bad habits: most days I see drivers coming out of a side street to turn left. Where are they looking? To the right with no thought of looking left. Accidents waiting to happen.
Another one is when drivers indicate and pulll in dangerously in front. I stopped one for this once and he looked at me and stupidly asked, 'didn't you see me indicate?'. It appears that a common misconception is that giving a signal is all that's required before barging in. I always thought that the rule was 'signal in plenty of time then, when safe to do so, maneuvre'.
It may be a revenue-raiser when one uses a phone while driving but what about being absorbed by the GPS? Or eating? Drinking?

Foxy

Your experience in the USA, resonates with mine. Drivers are much more aware of their responsibilities on the road. If you indicate to change lanes, then the driver in the other lane will let you in - instead of speeding up as happens here.

Also, I found that if emergency vehicles (ambulance, fire) were on the road, immediately people would pull over and come to a complete halt after hearing the siren. Here drivers usually just slow down a little. Some stop - they all should stop to allow emergency vehicles through.

AP - have to agree with you about motorcycles, I learnt very quickly to treat every other road user as capable of doing anything at any time without notice, when I used to ride. Thanks to starting out on motorcycles, I learnt to anticipate and avoid. While I may have a bad back now, that is nothing compared to how I could've wound up.

I find Australian drivers (male and female) to be the most aggressive in the Western world.

It has to be about education, because I don't think our culture is any more aggressive than in the USA.