TWO developments above all have reduced our road toll.
The first was seat belts, compulsory in front seats from 1969, and in all seats from 1971.
The second development began 40 years ago today, on December 17, 1982, when the Wran Labor government introduced random breath testing in NSW.
After both initiatives, the state's road toll declined noticeably.
Nowadays, the Australian road-fatality rate is a bit over four deaths a year for every 100,000 people.
Rewind to 1970, the worst year on record, and 3798 people lost their lives on the roads, representing a fatality rate of 30.4 per 100,000 people.
By 1982, the road toll was down to 3252, and the fatality rate was 21.4 per 100,000.
After a year of RBT the 1983 road toll was 2755, at 17.9 deaths per 100,000.
In 1997 the death rate hit single figures; 1767 fatalities and a death rate of 9.54 deaths per 100,000.
Last year, the road toll was 1123, and the fatality rate was 4.4 per 100,000.
These are dramatic improvements by any measure, and Australia is now ranked in about 20th position, internationally, with Norway (1.73/100,000) and Sweden (1.98/100,000) the statistically safest nations.
As well as testing for drink-driving, Australian police forces are increasingly utilising drug-detection equipment to carry out roadside random drug tests, or RDTs.
Some of the test results from RDT blitzes have alarmed the authorities, with positive rates well beyond anything picked up through RBT.
This in itself raises a series of questions.
While the outcomes of drink-driving are obvious - nobody seriously questions the impact of alcohol on motor skills - the effect of low levels of cannabis, for example, are not so clear-cut.
From a safety perspective, police and state governments say that the ends justify the means when it comes RBT, RDT, speed cameras and the controversial new inner-city speed limits of 30km/h.
Still, there's an argument to see the roads as part of a broader surveillance state that became obvious after 9/11, and which flared again with COVID.
State interventions may keep us safe, but accepting them shows an Australia far removed from a romantic self-image of a nation of Ned Kellys.
Notably, the proudly individualistic United States has no RBT.
The cost, though, is a fatality rate of about 12 per 100,000, which is where we were in the 1990s.
And the 1930s.
ISSUE: 39,780
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