Road Safety – Is It a Local Government Priority? (What Does the Experience Suggest?)

As the road authority for the unclassified (i.e. local) roads in their local government area, councils have the legislated responsibility to manage their road infrastructure; this fundamentally includes the safety of road users on their networks. Almost 70% of the 392 fatalities on NSW roads in 2017 occurred on country roads (Transport for NSW, 2018). The contribution of the local road network to road trauma across Australasia is significant with over half (52%) of all fatal and serious injuries recorded on roads that are the sole responsibility of local government (McTiernan et. al., 2016). Governments at all levels - Local, State and Federal – can no longer ignore the contribution of local roads to the national tragedy and trauma occurring each year. Without a concerted effort by all tiers of government to address road safety performance on the vast local road network, Australia will not achieve the 30% reduction target in fatal and serious injuries as set out in the National Road Safety Plan. Unfortunately, the current status for managing safety on local roads sees a myriad of systemic hurdles and failures that ultimately result in local government not making road safety a genuine priority. But what is required to change this situation? Two case studies are presented to assist a discussion about some of the systemic failures that contribute to local councils not taking, or not being able to take, action to make road safety a genuine priority.