Nearly 30 years ago, the Transport Accident Commission (TAC) created a firestorm of debate when it debuted the first of its shock tactic road safety ads that portrayed the mangled cars, bodies and anguish of fatal accidents.
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At the time, TAC maintained the chilling approach had been built around market research that revealed a blase, “it won’t happen to me” attitude among drivers of the day. As one part of efforts to reduce the road toll, were the ads successful? A quick look at the history of the Victorian road toll shows that it was around 500 in the early 1990s compared to 258 last year.
Skip to this week when one woman was killed and four others airlifted to Melbourne hospitals after a log truck ploughed into their car while they were stationery at a section of roadworks near Portland. The sheer horror of the accident defies description.
And while investigations continue, questions that were being asked 30 years ago remain: how can we stop the carnage on our roads?
TAC’s current road safety campaign is Towards Zero. It is built around a vision of no road deaths or injuries and a premise that they no longer accept that it’s inevitable that people die or are seriously injured because they are on our roads. Further, through partnerships with VicRoads, Victoria Police and the Department of Justice, TAC is promoting a safe systems model where “if a mistake is made on the road the impact is severely reduced or negated by safer roads, safer vehicles, safer speeds and safer people”.
It is clear that serious road accidents are caused by a combination of factors and that concentrating on one and ignoring others will not save lives.
The media’s role in education efforts to make “safer people” (i.e. improving driver behaviour) is one understood and encouraged by emergency authorities. As difficult and traumatic as it is for journalists, photographers, readers and relatives of the dead and injured; media organisations record and publish images of crash scenes in cooperation with police and other emergency personnel in the hope these will complement other ongoing efforts to reduce the number of lives lost.
Another thing also is clear. The state of the region’s road are part of the reasons for the road toll. How many more people will have to die before the federal Liberal and state Labor governments act together to improve roads in the region?
