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Making sure drivers know the road rules before renewing their licence and reviewing the impact of wearing headphones while driving are among key recommendations to come out of a Road Safety Roundtable.
Ahead of National Road Safety Week on 2 May this year, RAA convened a Road Safety Roundtable which brought together industry experts and decision makers – including the Minister for Road Safety, representatives from the emergency services, road safetyexperts and industry associations – to analyse how South Australia can reach the targets set out in the SA Road Safety Strategy.
The state’s 10-year Road Safety Strategy and Action Plan targets a 50% reduction in lives lost and 30% reduction in serious injuries by 2031.
SA Police data shows SA is not on track to meet these targets – with 99 lives lost and 807 series injuries on our roads in the 12 months to the end of March 2024 – putting SA 18% and 23% above the targets respectively.
The roundtable focussed on three critical areas where significant improvement is needed, specifically vulnerable road users, regional road safety, and road user behaviour.
The state’s peak motoring group has released some of the recommendations for discussion and further exploration, including:
RAA Senior Manager Road Safety Charles Mountain said the roundtable was very successful and many of the findings had a lot of merit and were worth further discussion.
“These recommendations are a great starting point to progress initiatives that will improve road safety and hopefully help save lives on our roads,” Mr Mountain said.
“There were a lot of great discussions during the roundtable and a real sense of collaboration across the board.
“We’ll now work with the relevant stakeholders to investigate and prioritise some of the key recommendations to determine if they’ll have a positive impact on reducing road trauma and improving road safety.”
If you have a question about road rules, contact RAA’s Road Safety team on RoadSafety@raa.com.au or 8202 4570.