Road Safety and a main factor ignored will lead to spike in road toll.

With the confines of the safety profession in this country and around the world the lack of knowledge and willingness to explore and create is obvious.

To highlight this lack of knowledge, understanding and ability to look at all factors, we can look at the previous post and the chart associated! For instance there is trend of reducing road tolls from the period of 2002!

While some would argue it's becuase of speed reductions, it is quite obvious that it is not due to this factor at all and becuase of the lack of knowledge and education of our safety leaders they just can't see that this drop in the road toll correlates perfectly with the rising fuel prices in the world.

So with rising fuel prices people do less driving, move closer to their workplaces etc etc and as such there is no real drop in the road toll, just a drop in the total Kilometres travelled, due to family budget restrictions!

Now with fuel prices dropping rapidly and if they continue to do so as predicted, the road toll will again rise again due to the financial ability to drive more, in fact they are predicted to drop below a dollar a litre before Christmas so this Christmas the road toll will be a record at least since 2002.

If we think back to 2002 fuel prices were below 70 cents per litre so with the price around $1 a litre this year there still will not be the level of driving as pre 2002 but with more disposable income there will be a spike in the road toll this year and if fuel prices continue to remain relatively low the road toll will head back on an upward trend due to the fact that the safety experts still can't see it's the objects that are hit in a loss of control of a vehicle that causes the energy release that kills and untill roads are designed without these objects the road toll will continue to fluctuate!

It could also be argued the same in the State of Victoria which the chart is based! Not only has there been a dramatic increase in fuel prices, the state government has been raising revenue from speed camera's (around $400 Million a year with a population of 4 million approx) which has reduced the disposable income of Victorians significantly, thus reducing kilometers travelled by each vehicle.

And to highlight how much money they stip of the Victorians! Every single Victorian on average contributes $100 to the Government each year in speeding fines. Now we know there are many children and other non drivers in that figure of 4 million people and many leaving the state for better states, that makes the figure for motorists a lot more (from memory there are around 1 million drivers) so that would increase this figure for motorists to $400 each year in speeding fines. Now we also know the speed camera system is focussed mainly in areas that raise the most revenue (not black spots as should be) so there are many motorists paying far more in speeding fines.

This all reduces the number of kilometers travelled and hence the reducing in the road toll dramatically.

But then consider someone on a low income is paying far more of a percentage of income than their high income earning counterparts so the effects of speed camera's on the poor is even more dramatic taking those motorists from the road becuase of lack of affordability and you can see clearly why there is a reduction in the road toll! Becuase people cannot afford to drive as far or as often!

So if I am seeing clearly the road toll should start to rise again with the fuel cost dropping! In fact it will correlate perfectly.

Regards
Daniel