National Road Safety Action Plan to reduce road trauma
The first National Road Safety Action Plan (2023–2025) for the National Road Safety Strategy 2021–30 has been agreed by Australian, state and territory road and transport ministers to support the shared goal of reducing road trauma across Australia.
The Action Plan focuses on delivering tangible and measurable actions, clear responsibilities and timeframes, with consistency and linkages between the Strategy and Action Plan.
It sets out the actions the Australian, state and territory governments will take to implement the nine priority areas in the strategy over the next three years.
Important Australian Government actions include:
improving regional and remote road safety through targeted road safety infrastructure programs,
progressing the uptake of new vehicle safety features and technologies through new Australian Design Rules, and
building and upgrading heavy vehicle rest areas.
The development of the Action Plan included extensive consultation between the Australian, state and territory governments, the Australian Local Government Association, and a broad range of road safety stakeholders.
An annual progress report against the Action Plan will be provided to infrastructure and transport ministers and publicly released each year, providing transparency on the road safety activities of all governments.
Local governments manage 75.3 per cent of all roads across the network. This Action Plan includes actions from the Australian, state and territory governments to support and build the capacity of local governments to deliver stronger safety outcomes on their networks.
The Action Plan recognises the importance of robust road safety data, committing the Australian, state and territory governments to developing a National Road Safety Data Collection and Reporting Framework.
This framework will provide a clearer way to build a national data set for road safety that provides insights into where serious injuries and deaths are occurring and their contributing factors.
The Action Plan also includes the development of a National Research Framework to improve coordination, test new concepts and ideas, develop best-practice approaches and consider emerging issues. This process will commence with a review into the research, funded by the Australian Government, which is currently being undertaking by institutions across the country.
For more information, visit roadsafety.gov.au.