Old vices appear to be undermining new technology in crash prevention, as distraction, seatbelts alcohol and drugs undo the benefits.
Last week Queensland’s lead motoring body, the RACQ’s Annual Road Safety Survey revealed one in six or 15.7 per cent of recipients admit to drink driving in a year when the state is heading toward another record toll.
This was the highest rate since the survey began in 2017 along with 6.1 per cent of drivers admitting to drug use before driving .
Undoing the benefits
In March, Automatic Emergency Braking became mandatory in new vehicles in Australia, and more ADAS systems are now incorporated into new cars for crash prevention.
But an AAMI Crash Index report showed impatience was undermining this technology as well, with one in five drivers disabling their car’s safety features, with half saying they found safety features “annoying”, “distracting”, and “too sensitive” and a quarter saying they don’t need them.
Seatbelts and phones
In Victoria, distraction and seatbelt use is high on the agenda, with last week the government naming a further 323 locations for detection cameras specifically aimed at phone use while driving and seatbelt violations.
The most recent statistics from the last quarter 2024 how the mobile phone and seatbelt detection cameras captured 9,305 offences, including 3,792 drivers and 2,488 passengers not wearing seatbelts, and 3,025 drivers using mobile phones.
The Victorian government argues the cameras alone will prevent 95 casualty crashes per year.
Mandatory seatbelts, almost 55 years old across Australia and a new regime of blood alcohol testing are often attributed to be the two greatest factors that have seen the Australian road toll drop to a third of its sixty’s levels.
But lately this trend has been reversing with other factors including mobile phone use attributed as a cause.
Crisis rates
For Queensland, the latest results seem an unwanted return to that past, with RACQ Head of Public Policy Dr Michael Kane saying the survey findings amounted to a crisis.
“We clearly have an increasing drink and drug driving cultural problem in Queensland and it’s causing serious harm to our communities,” Dr Kane says.
“Between 2020 and 2024, an average of 57 people died each year in crashes involving drink drivers, and 59 in drug-related crashes. This is an increase from 2019 when the road toll was 220 with 46 deaths involving drink driving and 43 deaths related to drug driving.”
Queensland is on track to record a second consecutive year of more than 300 road deaths and RACQ is calling for urgent reform.
“It’s clear too many drivers are not taking the law seriously, and there has been a shift in respect for road rules since COVID with road trauma trending up,” Dr Kane said.
“Queensland’s positive drug test rate in 2023 was 21 per cent, more than double that of NSW, yet our State’s drug testing rate was among the lowest in Australia.