Victoria’s 25 per cent jump in road deaths contributed to a 6.8 per cent increase nationwide over the first 11 months of 2023, pushing the national toll to 1150 at the end of November, according to federal transport department data.
Deaths jumped 29 per cent in NSW and 67 per cent in South Australia over that period, but there were declines in Western Australia (-9 per cent), Tasmania (-42 per cent), the Northern Territory (-41 per cent) and the ACT (-83 per cent).
Michael Fitzharris, associate professor at the Monash University Accident Research Centre, said the outcome was “quite stark” compared to Victoria’s commitment to cut road deaths by half between 2020 and 2030.
“It’s heading in the wrong direction,” he said.
Fitzharris said it appeared quieter roads and reduced police enforcement during the COVID-19 pandemic have contributed to increased aggressive and high-risk driving, as well as less serious but still dangerous “micro-transgressions”, such as motorists failing to indicate or give way.
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At the same time, more people were driving as Victoria’s population surged, including in the regions, where they encountered narrow, high-speed, tree-lined roads.
Fitzharris said Victoria needed highly visible police enforcement to correct dangerous behaviour in the short-term, and bipartisan political support to lower speed limits on dangerous country roads from 100km/h to 80km/h, to give motorists a chance to survive head-on collisions.
“If you don’t have physical separation between oncoming traffic and trees, the road should not be 100km/h – it’s as simple as that,” he said.
“The government has a strong commitment to rolling out barriers and improving infrastructure. But in the absence of being able to spend a massive, impossible amount of money, it’s more cost-effective for us to match the speed limit to the environment.”
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More than half (159) of the deaths this year were in rural Victoria. Those killed statewide include 44 pedestrians, 55 motorcyclists, nine cyclists, and nine children aged 15 or younger.
Another 18,811 people were injured in crashes last financial year, according to state government data – up from 18,539 the previous year, but down from 19,746 in 2019-20.
Victoria Police also told a state inquiry into road safety earlier this year it believes reduced road enforcement during the COVID-19 pandemic had contributed to an increase in dangerous driving.
The police force conducted 2.47 million drink-driving tests in the 2023 financial year and 1.6 million in 2022, compared to 3.45 million in 2019, as COVID-19 infection control limited its ability to conduct tests and officers were redeployed to quarantine facilities and other pandemic roles.
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Road Safety Minister Melissa Horne said on Friday the government would pull “every single lever” it can to meet its commitment of halving road deaths between 2020 and 2030.
“Whether it’s things like driver education, improving our infrastructure, making sure that there are the appropriate speed limits – we are looking at every opportunity to drop our road toll,” she said.
Horne said the vast majority of Victoria’s road network was controlled by local councils though, and the state had to work with them to set speed limits and infrastructure.
The Mornington Peninsula Shire reduced speeds on 33 local roads from the Victorian default of 100km/h to 80km/h in December 2019. It recorded a 20 per cent reduction in crashes and no deaths on those roads, compared to six deaths in 2019.
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“We have seen a significant reduction in the road toll down there, but these are things that we need to work [on] in partnership with the local government sector,” Horne said.
The Department of Transport and Planning and TAC are spending $200 million over the next four years to help local governments review their roads and implement safety improvements, including infrastructure upgrades and revised speed limits.
However, local councils told this year’s lower house road-safety inquiry that getting state government approval to lower speed limits was a long and “very onerous” process.
Horne said driver distraction cameras – which started operating in April and caught almost 1160 motorists using their mobile phones behind the wheel in the first month – were acting as a “real, effective deterrence” against bad behaviour.
It comes as mobile speed camera operators walk off the job for two full days over New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day as part of industrial action against private operator Serco.
The TAC’s Cockfield said there was no evidence that poor road maintenance and potholes were contributing to road deaths. About 20 to 25 per cent of vehicle occupants killed in crashes this year weren’t wearing seatbelts, she said.
Mark Stevenson, professor of urban transport and public health at the University of Melbourne, said Victoria had been a world leader in tackling road trauma by introducing mandatory seatbelt laws in 1970 and random breath testing in 1976.
But strategies focusing on driver behaviour had “diminishing returns”, he said, and would not alone deliver the reductions in deaths the state was targeting, as Victorians are driving more and population growth is concentrated around Melbourne’s car-dependent outer suburbs.
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“The focus needs to be on transport planning, one that delivers an integrated transport system and doesn’t rely on a single private vehicle we use to get everywhere,” Stevenson said. “With that, we will be able to deliver safer and more sustainable transport, and that needs to be the key for safety.”
Victoria Police’s assistant commissioner for road policing, Glenn Weir, said the police’s focus in 2024 would be “targeted operations, set to run everywhere from the state’s biggest freeways to the back roads where you think you won’t get caught”.
“Far too many lives were cut short this year due to simple and highly avoidable mistakes, such as texting and driving, getting behind the wheel after too many drinks, or disobeying basic road rules,” he said.
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