Tackling Regional Australia's road safety challenges

ARRB’s expertise has been called upon to help highlight the challenges faced by road practitioners in providing regional Australia with safer road infrastructure.

ARRB’s Transport Safety National Leader, David McTiernan, participated in the Road Safety Roundtable for Regional and Remote Road Users, hosted by Assistant Minister for Road Safety and Freight Transport, the Hon Scott Buchholz MP.

The series of invitation-only roundtables, organised by the Office of Road Safety, covered priority areas in the draft National Road Safety Strategy, sought to address how the Australian Government can work with organisations to better achieve road safety outcomes.

As the National Transport Research Organisation, ARRB’s input was sought to provide the Assistant Minister with direct insight to the challenges faced by road practitioners to provide safer road infrastructure servicing regional and remote regional areas of the country.

ARRB’s contribution outlined critical areas impacting on the ability of local government to service their communities by providing and maintaining the vast road network to a standard where the risk of death and serious injury from road crashes supports a Vision Zero approach.

"Council road managers in regional and remote regional areas of the country face an especially difficult challenge when it comes to ensuring the safety of their community and visitors travelling on their road networks,’’ Mr McTiernan said.

"The effect of being responsible for vast road networks, often with limited financial and staff resources, and faced with an increasing demand on local roads servicing growing freight and tourism traffic on an aging asset means road safety improvements are often placed down the list of priorities for many councils. 

“But the time for local government to improve safety on their roads to benefit their communities is now. 

“With record levels of investment being provided by the Federal and State/Territory governments, local government needs to be supported to ensure they can utilise best practice techniques to target their higher risk roads and intersections.”

Every State and Territory has signed up to the Safe System approach and all are committed to a vision of zero death and serious injury on our roads by the middle of this century. 

Achieving this requires local government to be a part of the solution.

Talk to ARRB's transport safety team about how we can help your Council