Driving safer cars will improve road safety outcomes and help save lives.
Strengthening child restraint laws
Road crashes are the leading cause of death for children aged 1 to 14 and many of these tragedies can be prevented with the proper use of a child restraint or seatbelt.
Currently, South Australia’s child restraint laws are outdated and do not reflect national best practice.
RAA is calling for:
The minimum age for children travelling forward-facing to increase from six to 12 months.
Child restraints to be used in taxis, consistent with rules for rideshare and private vehicles.
Greater clarity around rules governing how tall a child aged 7 to 16 should be before being allowed to use an adult seatbelt.
Reducing the age of our fleet
RAA supports measures to ensure the new car fleet remains affordable and accessible, so more consumers replace their older vehicles with newer, safer and more fuel-efficient ones.
Currently, South Australia has the oldest fleet of all states except Tasmania. The average age of our passenger vehicles is almost 13 years, well above the national average of 11 years.
Measures to help uptake of new cars includes reducing taxes and charges at both the federal and state level (including vehicle import taxes and stamp duty) and maintaining a competitive new car market.
Vehicle design standards
RAA believes all vehicle designers, manufacturers and repairers should adopt global best practices and for the Australian Design Rules to be regularly updated based on the latest safety data and research.
RAA supports the Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP) and Used Car Safety Ratings (UCSR) for promoting safety standards for new and used vehicles at the point of purchase.
Compliance with ANCAP’s safety improvements and Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) regulation is essential.
Mandatory inspections
RAA does not support compulsory time-related or change-of-ownership vehicle inspections for light vehicles under 2.5 tonnes, as these have not proven to consistently improve vehicle condition or reduce crashes.
As there is no evidence to suggest that mandatory inspection schemes improve road safety, RAA does not support these inspection schemes and instead advocates for increasing roadside roadworthy inspections.
Based on the number of private used car sales in South Australia on any given year, a mandatory inspection proposal would mean a $10+ million impost on private sellers—at a time when cost of living is at an all-time high.
That’s why RAA supports active policing of vehicle roadworthiness through police patrols and random roadside inspections by qualified technicians.
These inspections should focus on crash-related defects, illegal modifications and environmental issues like smoke and noise.
RAA encourages all buyers to do their homework and obtain a pre-sale inspection on any vehicle they’re looking to purchase, particularly in the private market.
Heavy vehicle inspections
RAA supports increased inspections of heavy vehicles to detect un-roadworthy conditions and drivers breaching licencing conditions.
All parties in the Chain of Responsibility (CoR) must ensure safe road freight operations and RAA endorses CoR legislation to improve compliance and enable enforcement against non-compliance.
RAA also supports the Heavy Vehicle Inspection Scheme (HVIS) in South Australia, aligning with other jurisdictions, to conduct inspections at change of ownership and regular intervals.
This scheme would identify, monitor and reduce un-worthiness as a factor in crashes, enhancing heavy vehicle safety on South Australian roads.
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