Road Safety Strategy: Road safety areas of focus

Surprisingly, while extreme behaviour poses a heightened risk, it is the persistence of single acts of non-compliance that leads to the majority of fatal collisions, especially when one or more of these seven contributing factors is present.

Speed

Speed continues to be the prominent contributing factor in serious road trauma.

Speed management and driving to the conditions is crucial to minimising risk and reducing the impacts of road trauma.

What we know about speeding:

• Inappropriate or excessive speed contributes significantly to collisions on Victoria’s roads.⁹
• Victorian drivers appear to have adopted an unacceptable tolerance to low-level speeding.
• 64% of surveyed drivers admitted to intentionally speeding at 3 km/hr or more over the speed limit.¹⁰
• Drivers focus on posted speed limits rather than adapting to the conditions. The posted speed limit on any road refers to the maximum speed in perfect conditions.

Distraction

Operating a motor vehicle safely requires a significant level of skill and attention, and if a road user is distracted, they are unable to effectively manage the risks on the road.

Mobile phone usage continues to be a major contributing factor in collisions and contributes significantly to road trauma.

What we know about distraction.

• Drivers are 10 times more at risk of crashing if they are texting, browsing, or emailing on their mobile.¹¹
• The Road Safety Monitor 2023 Report indicates 51 per cent of drivers surveyed use a mobile phone while driving.¹²
• From 1 July 2023 to 30 December 2023, the driver distraction and seatbelt cameras detected 30,231 drivers using a mobile device.¹³

Impaired driving

The operation of any vehicle requires a high degree of concentration, and any impairment renders the road user incapable of operating it safely.

Alcohol, prescription/illicit drugs, medical capacity and fatigue, or a combination of these, remain as key contributors to impairment related collisions.

It is critical for Victoria Police and our road safety partners to continue to address road trauma caused by impaired driving.

What we know about impairment:

• 48 per cent of Victorians consider driving after two or more alcoholic drinks.¹⁴
• One in five drivers killed on our roads have a blood alcohol concentration of .05 or higher.¹⁵
• In the last five years, 41 per cent of drivers and motorcyclists killed had drugs in their system.¹⁶
• In Victoria, around 30 people die each year, and up to 200 are seriously injured, due to fatigue related collisions.¹⁷

Seatbelts and restraints

In 2023, there were several collisions where vehicle occupants not wearing a properly fitted seatbelt were killed, whilst other occupants in the same vehicle wearing seatbelts survived.¹⁸

What we know about the use of seatbelts and restraints:

• The TAC Road Safety Monitor 2023 report indicated that 2.7 per cent of drivers and 4.2 per cent of passengers travelled in a vehicle without wearing a seatbelt within the previous 12 months. The report also indicates that the perceived risk by the driver of being caught by police, for failing to wear a seatbelt, was less than 31 per cent.
• 130 lives were lost in the last five years where the occupant was not wearing a seatbelt.¹⁹
• From 1 July 2023 to 30 December 2023 the driver distraction and seatbelt cameras detected 16,499 drivers and 6375 passengers not wearing seatbelts.²⁰

Rural roads

The rural road network across regional Victoria continues to present significant risk to road users.

Population growth and migration from metropolitan to rural areas has seen an increase in registered vehicles and their use on high risk rural roads that have little or no safety infrastructure.

Road user errors on rural roads disproportionately result in serious injury or death when combined with other contributing factors such as speed, impairment, distraction, and a failure to wear seatbelts.

What we know about rural roads:

• Rural roads account for over 50 per cent of our annual road deaths, however only 24 per cent of Victorian drivers live in rural areas.²¹
• Approximately 50 per cent of deaths on rural roads involve single vehicle crashes.²²
• In 2023, nearly 25 per cent of vehicles involved in fatal collisions in rural areas were over 20 years old.²³

High risk driving

High risk driving includes any form of extreme driving behaviour that endangers life or could cause injury.

Recidivist offenders engaging in high risk driving every time they get behind the wheel are often involved in other criminal offending and unauthorised driving.

We will continue to target organised drag meets and hoon events as a public order issue, however we will also focus on identifying those individuals who engage in high-risk driving every day.

What we know about high risk driving:

• High risk drivers are often involved in other offending and may fail to stop on police direction, driving dangerously and at extreme speeds to evade police.
• In 2022–23, Victoria Police recorded 14,165 vehicle impoundments for a range of offences.²⁴

Unauthorised drivers

Unauthorised drivers continue to pose significant risks to the community and themselves, often highly represented in road trauma, traffic offences, and criminal offending.

This group has strong links to other forms of non-compliance including excessive speed, the use of illicit drugs, and unregistered vehicles.

Removing high-risk and recidivist unauthorised drivers from the roads is a priority for Victoria Police.

What we know about unauthorised drivers:

• Approximately 10 per cent of road users killed each year are unauthorised.²⁵
• In 2022, 40 per cent of motorcycle riders killed on Victorian roads were unauthorised.²⁶
• The increased use of automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) technology will assist us to identify unauthorised road users and hold them to account.

---

^{9 Transport Accident Commission, Speed Statistics, last accessed 20 September 2024, available at https://www.tac.vic.gov.au/road-safety/statistics/summaries/speed-statistics}

^{10 Out of a survey sample of 6,987 Victorians, TAC, Road Safety Monitor Annual Report 2023, p.19, available here: https://www.tac.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/872745/RSM-2023-Report.pdf}

^{11 TAC, The Facts - distractions and driving, last accessed 20 September 2024, available at https://www.tac.vic.gov.au/road-safety/staying-safe/distracted-driving/the-facts-distractions-and-driving}

^{12 TAC, Road Safety Monitor Annual Report 2023, available at https://www.tac.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/872745/RSM-2023-Report.pdf}

^{13 Victorian Government, Mobile phone and seatbelt detection cameras webpage, last accessed 20 September 2024, available at https://www.vic.gov.au/mobile-phone-and-seatbelt-detection-cameras}

^{14 TAC, Road Safety Monitor Annual Report 2023}

^{15 TAC, Drink driving webpage, last accessed 20 September 2024, available at https://www.tac.vic.gov.au/road-safety/staying-safe/drink-driving}

^{16 TAC, Drug driving webpage, last accessed 20 September 2024, available at https://www.tac.vic.gov.au/road-safety/staying-safe/drug-driving}

^{17 TAC, Tired driving webpage, last accessed 20 September 2024, available at https://www.tac.vic.gov.au/road-safety/staying-safe/tired-driving}

^{18 Victoria Police Statistics, 2023, Lives Lost}

^{19 TAC, Seatbelts webpage, last accessed 20 September 2024, available at https://www.tac.vic.gov.au/road-safety/staying-safe/seatbelts}

^{20 Victorian Government, Mobile phone and seatbelt detection cameras webpage, last accessed 20 September 2024, available at https://www.vic.gov.au/mobile-phone-and-seatbelt-detection-cameras}

^{21 Victoria Police Statistics, 2023, Lives Lost summary}

^{22 TAC, Crash location data, 2018, accessed here: https://www.tac.vic.gov.au/road-safety/statistics/summaries/crash-location-data/}

^{23 Victoria Police Statistics, 2023, Lives Lost}

^{24 Victoria Police Annual Report, 2022-23, p.16, available here: https://www.police.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-10/Victoria-Police-Annual-Report-2022-23.pdf}

^{25 Victoria Police Statistics, 2023, Lives Lost}

^{26 TAC, Too many lives lost on Victorian roads in 2022, available at https://www.tac.vic.gov.au/about-the-tac/media-room/news-and-events/202…)%20of%20unauthorised%20 motorcyclists}