The Australian Automobile Association (AAA) has welcomed the Government’s commitment to fund the Australian Trauma Registry.
The Registry will gather better data on the number and type of severe injuries due to road crashes, and help make Australia’s roads safer through better planning and more targeted investment.
AAA Chief Executive Michael Bradley said: “The AAA and the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons have for some time been advocating for the Government to make this very important investment in road safety. The AAA congratulates the Government on today’s decision.
“The first step in fixing any problem is understanding its magnitude. The funding announced today will go a long way towards helping all levels of government better understand road trauma and to take steps to reduce it.”
In 2011 all Australia’s governments signed on to a National Road Safety Strategy (NRSS) which seeks to reduce road deaths and serious injuries by at least 30 per cent through the decade to 2020.
While deaths resulting from road crashes are accurately monitored, until now there has been no clear picture of the incidence of road trauma at the national level, with the best estimate being that around 625 Australians are seriously injured on the roads each week.
After making encouraging progress in the early years of the NRSS, the number of road deaths has begun to trend up nationally since early 2015. The AAA’s latest Benchmarking the Performance of the National Road Safety Strategy report shows 1,273 people died on Australian roads in the year to September 2016, an increase from 1,187 a year earlier.
