Safety
Overall, road transport safety in Australia is of a relatively moderate to high standard. Road quality, safety barrier and features is of a moderate level in urban areas and of a high standard on new roads, however in regional areas and some major highways, road quality is sometimes severely affected by lack of funding and maintenance. Speed is generally limited to around 100 km/h.
Vehicles are generally moderately safe. Many vehicle users cannot afford newer vehicles and as a result, the second-hand car market is quite large. There are many older model vehicles and while they require a Road Worthy Certificate (RWC) to ensure basic operation is sound, only newer vehicles have safety features such as crumple zones, air bags, etc. Seat belt usage is generally very high and it is illegal to go without a seatbelt.
Several efforts have been at educating the mass population about road safety, the most prominent and successful being the Victorian state Transport Accident Commission (TAC) road safety advertisements, began in the late 1980s in print and television, which often depicted horrific and graphic road accidents initiated by various causes such as speed, alcohol and drug use, distraction, fatigue and many others. The TAC ads were very effective and reduced the road toll drastically. The method was subsequently adopted elsewhere in Australia and the world.
Speed limits have been progressively reduced in urban streets, from 60 km/h to 50 km/h and more recently, to 40 km/h near schools, built up areas and shopping strips. This is to ensure safer stopping distances to minimise/reduce pedestrian injuries and casualties.
Read more about this topic: Roads In Australia
Famous quotes containing the word safety:
“For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from the sportsman;... but what beside safety they got by sailing in the middle of Walden I do not know, unless they love its water for the same reason that I do.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There is always safety in valor.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“[As teenager], the trauma of near-misses and almost- consequences usually brings us to our senses. We finally come down someplace between our parents’ safety advice, which underestimates our ability, and our own unreasonable disregard for safety, which is our childlike wish for invulnerability. Our definition of acceptable risk becomes a product of our own experience.”
—Roger Gould (20th century)