The Australasian College of Road Safety (ACRS) urges all political parties contesting the 2025 Australian Federal Election to commit to concrete measures aimed at significantly reducing road trauma, which claims over 1,300 Australian lives each year1.
ACRS reiterates its call for the following urgent policy actions,
- Ensuring new housing developments include safe active travel and public transport infrastructure.
- Legislate and resource a national road crash investigation agency
- Ensuring a minimum three-star safety rating for all new road infrastructure, ensure these ratings are made public, and develop a regulatory impact statement on reducing the urban default limit and associated traffic calming treatments.
- Aligning Australian vehicle safety standards with Europe’s higher standards.
- Establishing a robust Joint Standing Committee on Road Safety
- Assist neighbouring countries to improve road safety that accelerates economic development.
The ACRS acknowledges the recent commitment by the Federal Coalition to expand the scope of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau to oversee a national no-fault crash investigation pilot2 for road crashes, representing progress and partially addressing the ACRS recommendation for a fully resourced independent national agency.
With over ten times3 more fatalities on Australian roads each year than in air, marine, and rail transport combined, a dedicated, independent, no-blame investigative body is essential. Investigations by the ATSB have been instrumental in identifying systemic safety risks and driving industry and government action to prevent further tragedies. Applying this model to road safety would allow for targeted investigations, providing critical insights into the factors contributing to severe crashes.
Dr Ingrid Johnston, CEO of the ACRS, stated: “To save lives on our roads, we must take bold, evidence-based action – build road safety into new housing developments, ensure all new roads are safer, review speed limits, adopt the highest vehicle standards, improve accountability and parliamentary oversight, and strengthen road safety in our region – partial measures are not enough when the stakes involve human lives.”
With the 2025 election upon us, ACRS challenges all political parties, to clearly state their strategies to tackle Australia’s devastating 1,300 road fatalities and tens of thousands of serious injuries annually. Dr Johnston emphasised, “These trauma rates have increased for the last four years in a row. Australian voters deserve clear, evidence-based commitments from those seeking government on how they will stop the needless death on our roads.”
Source:
- BITRE: Road Deaths Australia – Monthly Bulletins (https://www.bitre.gov.au/publications/ongoing/road_deaths_australia_monthly_bulletins); and Road Safety Data Hub (https://datahub.roadsafety.gov.au/)
- https://www.liberal.org.au/2025/04/17/coalition-to-get-road-safety-back-on-track
- https://www.bitre.gov.au/publications/2023/australian-infrastructure-and-transport-statistics-yearbook-2023/transport-safety