Reign of the car must end if road toll is to be reduced

For many, owning a car can be the triumph of hope over experience. The thirsty tradie truck lingers as Australia’s top-selling vehicle despite the soaring cost of diesel. Amid tolls, gridlock and road rage, 6.4 million preferred to drive to work according to the COVID-19 2021 census while only 500,000 caught cheaper public transport. Despite innovative safety features, new laws and education campaigns, the need for speed ensures the road toll will not budge.

Now comes word from an unlikely source that the car can no longer have right of way on the road.

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Jean Todt, the former rally car driver who went on to become the president of Formula 1’s governing body FIA and general manager of Ferrari and is now the United Nations’ special envoy for road safety, has called time on the car: “We need to accept there is an evolution in transportation, an evolution in the use of cars and an evolution in what is allowed when you are a car driver. If you like speed, you go on a circuit, you don’t go on the roads.”

Crashes killed 1194 people on Australia’s roads last year – a figure that has hovered stubbornly around the same level for the past decade. While the latest figures compare favourably to the 1978 peak of 3705 fatalities, when drink-driving laws and obligatory seats belts accompanied a rise in car ownership rates, they sit awkwardly besides some countries that have almost halved their road fatalities over the same period. Australia has seven years to fulfil the pledge made by federal and state governments in 2021 to reduce road deaths by 50 per cent by 2030.

Todt was attending an International Transport Forum in Leipzig, Germany where experts consider it possible for Australia to save 500 lives a year, and point to countries including Norway (a 48 per cent reduction in annual deaths between 2010 and 2019), Greece (down 45 per cent) and Switzerland (down 43 per cent) as proof. “A lot has been done but, still, a lot needs to be done,” Todt said. “Australia has all the ingredients to be more ambitious about the number of victims on roads,” he adds.

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But many of the strategies shown to be effective are likely to annoy car-loving Australians: reducing speed limits to as low as 30km/h in built-up areas; redesigning cities to protect and prioritise pedestrians and cyclists; and discouraging driving altogether in favour of travel modes that are safer for both people and the environment.

Northern Beaches Council introduced a 30km/h speed limit in Manly near the harbour and beachfront in 2020 and the speed limit applies around some school zones but last week’s proposal by Melbourne City Council to ban cars from part of the CBD during peak hours gained predictable inner-city support but not from business owners.

Of course, we all want our cities to be faster, greener, smarter and safer and if we are to kick our reliance on fossil fuels and rescue our roads from gridlock, leaving our vehicles in the garage will play a big part.