Road safety recipe: Actions to immediately reduce crashes and road trauma

There are some things in our approach to road safety that are clear to industry veteran David Jenkins. And there are some things that are not.

For example, why is it that, despite spending so much more on road safety in comparison to air safety, we ‘accept’ much worse outcomes?

On the other hand, there are some clear things that we can do immediately to improve road safety and reduce road trauma in Australia.

David Jenkins has been involved in safety for 35 years. Now running a consultancy in the U.S., he was formerly the VP for Safety & Security in Australia for a major international mining company, where he led changes to vehicle safety that improved safety performance and reduced costs dramatically.

David Jenkins will share safety knowledge and experience from more than three decades in industry in an NRSPP webinar in July,  Making Road Safety ‘Fly’: A Corporate Leader’s Insights and Lessons from Three Decades in Industry, and expands on his perspectives on road safety, including the air vs. road safety comparison, in this Thought Leadership piece.

He believes we could improve road safety quickly with some simple changes in mindset, such as procurement practices that insisted on 5-star safety rated vehicles in an organisation’s fleet, including ‘grey’ fleets.

In the longer term, educating drivers so they understand modern safety technologies, such as lane and blind spot assist, will lead to more crashes being avoided.

“There are short, medium and long term things we could focus on,” David says.

“One short term thing is for employers to make a decision today to buy the safest vehicle appropriate and make sure it’s 5-star compliant. That is really easy and cost effective: nowadays the cost of a 5-star vehicle versus one that isn’t is negligible. Five star does not mean it’s gold plated luxury, it means it’s safe.

“We know speed is a killer. So another one in the medium term is for local and federal governments to mandate lower speeds; both in the urban and the rural environment, get the damn speeds down.

“Educate the public that speed limits are limits not targets. I think culturally we’re all guilty of seeing a 60kmh speed limit as a minimum target to be met and I’m just going to go a little bit faster than that.

“And finally government could move quite quickly, if it had the will, to change the ADRs. Right now you could build a vehicle that was fully compliant with the Australian Design Rules and end up with a zero star safety rating.

“Those three things could have a tremendous impact on safety outcomes in Australia, and anywhere frankly.”

Click here to register for the July NRSPP webinar with David Jenkins, Making Road Safety ‘Fly’: A Corporate Leader’s Insights and Lessons from Three Decades in Industry, and here to read the Thought Leadership piece, NRSPP Thought Leadership: Making Road Safety ‘Fly”.