Report highlights more must be done to eliminate road trauma.

Australasia’s independent authority on vehicle safety, ANCAP, has commended the report released today following the Inquiry into the National Road Safety Strategy – highlighting more must be done to eliminate road trauma.

One of the 12 recommendations put forward as a result of the Inquiry into the effectiveness of Australia’s current road safety strategy (2011-2020) is to:

“Implement rapid deployment and accelerated uptake of proven vehicle safety technologies and innovation.”

“This acknowledges the work of ANCAP to improve vehicle safety,” said ANCAP Chief Executive, Mr James Goodwin.

“Our mandate is to eliminate road trauma through the testing and promotion of safer vehicles. We are working hard to achieve this through influencing the design, specification and availability of new vehicle models with the latest safety features and technologies.”

“Objective performance testing of autonomous safety technologies is a key focus for ANCAP, and we will continue to raise the bar to ensure Australians are provided with the safest vehicles possible.”

“An area which requires greater focus is the age of the Australian vehicle fleet and its direct correlation to road fatalities,” Mr Goodwin added.

“There are more than 2.7 million registered vehicles on our roads aged 15 years or older. These vehicles are unlikely to be fitted with safety features that we now expect from new vehicles. So, not only do we need to focus attention to accelerate the uptake of new vehicles with the latest safety technologies, if tangible safety benefits are to be realised, we must implement ways and set targets to reduce the age of the fleet.”

“A key element to improving the safety of the fleet is improving vehicle affordability,”

“New technologies should also be affordable and accessible which will require leadership from not just governments but also industry,” Mr Goodwin said.