Foreword

Welcome to the second edition of Road Safety Priorities, RACQ’s map towards a sustained reduction in road trauma in Queensland.

As a Darling Downs resident and a frequent driver on Queensland’s highways, I personally can attest to how large, diverse and decentralised our state is.

As well, I am frequently reminded just how important the motor vehicle is in the everyday lives of Queenslanders. This is not just in terms of the convenience and freedom of mobility that the motor vehicle offers to people in towns and cities, but also as an important tool for communication, commerce and involvement in community life for people in more regional areas, where public transport is limited or non-existent.

Now representing some 1.2 million members, RACQ has been an advocate for safer and more efficient road travel since the Club’s formation in 1905.

The rate of road deaths and injuries in relation to Queensland’s growing population has dropped significantly over the past few decades with progressive improvement to our roads, vehicles, road user education and enforcement techniques. But more than 300 deaths and thousands of injuries on the state’s roads every year indicate that much more still needs to be done to effectively ‘vaccinate’ Queenslanders against the continuing road trauma epidemic.

The treatments for this major public health problem need to be more than ‘stabs in the dark’ if they are to be truly effective in the long term. They must be well researched, cost-effective and, ideally, the product of close engagement between all levels and branches of government in concert with the widest possible input from an informed community.

To help facilitate informed discussion, debate and decision-making, the RACQ has published this second edition of Road Safety Priorities. It updates and builds on the first edition and again details a comprehensive range of initiatives and countermeasures addressing roads, vehicles and road users, which the Club considers are needed to address the occurrence and severity of road crashes.

As with the first edition, the research behind the second edition of Road Safety Priorities includes the perspectives of RACQ members as road users as well as those of road safety experts.

The new folder and loose-leaf Priorities sheet format offers readers a more user-friendly way of accessing road safety issues of interest.

Road Safety Priorities will be useful to RACQ members, legislators, regulators, researchers and others who share the Club’s vital interest in making our roads safer for all Queenslanders.

We welcome feedback on Road Safety Priorities to the RACQ’s Traffic and Safety Department, which can be contacted by telephone on 1300 853 658 or (07) 3872 8925, or by email at: traffic@racq.com.au.

Richard Pietsch

RACQ President
October 2009