Introduction

Road traffic accidents statistics have shown considerably gradual decrease in number of crashes across different states between 2000 and 2020.

• New South Wales had the highest record of road crashes in 2000
• There is a fluctuated trend in record of crashes for Victoria, which informs that there is a need of change in road safety measurements to significantly reduce the total crashes.

The Australian road toll statistics could have been dropped at better rates by introducing new approach aparting from traditional “fatal five” strategies (Saunokonoko & Blancato, 2020).

• Drug activity has raised concerns in the increase of number of fatalities (Bowden, 2015).

Australian road roll data were sourced from Australian Road Deaths Database (ARDD) at https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/australian-road-deaths-database.

• Breath and drug testing data are also accounted for the causes of road accidents
• Holiday peaks such as Christmas and Easter will be considered

Road crashes across different states betweeen 2000 and 2020

Figure 1. The total number of road accidents across states over two decades

The fatalities by gender and age group in Victoria

The factors contributing to number of road crashes and fatalities

• Speed limit

• Alcohol related accidents

• Doing drugs while driving

• Holiday peaks cause driving distractions

Speed activity by Crash type

The effect of drug and alcohol involment on road fatalities

Figure 3. The total number of fatalities between drug and RBT testing across different states

Easter vs Christmas period

References

Australian Road Deaths Database. 2020. ARDD Fatalities September 2020. Available at https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/australian-road-deaths-database/resource/fd646fdc-7788-4bea-a736-e4aeb0dd09a8.

Australian Road Deaths Database. 2020. ARDD Fatal Crashes September 2020. Available at https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/australian-road-deaths-database/resource/d54f7465-74b8-4fff-8653-37e724d0ebbb.

Bowden, T. 2015. ‘Drug-drivers now more prominent than drink-drivers, with 30pc of fatal road accidents involving drugs, research says’. ABC news. Available at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-23/drug-drivers-exceed-rate-drink-drivers-research/6342102?nw=0.

Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics. 2020. Australian Roadside Drug Testing. Available at https://data.gov.au/dataset/ds-dga-2b299428-c626-4446-88ef-54930b8a5e9b/distribution/dist-dga-67c577de-7d8f-42fa-8119-87d6bb2d6547/details?q=.

Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics. 2020. Australian Random Breath Testing. Available at https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/australian-random-breath-testing.

Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics. 2020. Australian Easter road deaths. Available at https://data.gov.au/dataset/ds-dga-75870058-66e5-4115-9ece-80d1e46b39e5/details?q=road.

Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics. 2020. Australian Christmas road deaths. Available at https://data.gov.au/dataset/ds-dga-1a64f7f7-f200-49ca-806c-543c23ae5374/details?q=Australian%20christmas%20road%20deaths.

Saunokonoko, M & Blancato, T. 2020. ‘Why Austrlia’s road death toll has plateaued’. Australian 9news. Avaialble at https://www.9news.com.au/national/why-australias-road-death-toll-is-stuck-and-wont-drop-any-lower/f8bfeafc-2484-4df5-a6d3-144d786a341c.