National Road Safety Week

Ms THOMPSON (Davenport) (14:44): My question is to the Minister for Police. Can the minister update the house on National Road Safety Week?

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee—Treasurer, Minister for Defence and Space Industries, Minister for Police) (14:44): I thank the member for her question because this week is National Road Safety Week, and along with the other states and territories, of course, South Australia is ensuring that we are working hard to reaffirm the message to motorists as well as to other road users and those people around our roads the absolute necessity of being more careful and being safer about our roads.

Across our country approximately 1,200 people are killed every year and another 40,000 Australians are seriously injured on our nation's roads. Traffic collisions are, regrettably, I am advised the biggest killer of Australian children under the age of 15 and the second biggest killer of Australians aged between 15 and 24. Already this year 30 people have lost their lives on South Australian roads. So this week, especially during National Road Safety Week, the government and I in particular are pleading for South Australians to be safer on our roads, whether it is in the car, on a bike or as a pedestrian. Many in this place would know the fatal five, as they are called by South Australian police and emergency services workers: drink and drug driving, speeding, distraction, seatbelts and dangerous road users or those people who drive with a blatant disregard of the road rules.

Our government has continued to invest in further measures to try to reduce and prevent road trauma from occurring on our roads. We released a comprehensive new Road Safety Action Plan aiming to reduce lives lost on our roads by 50 per cent and to reduce serious injuries by 30 per cent, with a target date of 2031. This includes the introduction of time-based 40 km/h zones in school zones to protect some of the state's most vulnerable road users. This is particularly important around our schools that are located on arterial roads that have a standing speed limit of either 60 km/h or 50 km/h, higher than what we see across an increasing number of suburban streets, where the default speed limit is 40 km/h. These time-based 40 km/h zones in these school zones will be progressively rolled out from the middle of this year.

Another key prevention measure which has been extremely effective has been the deployment of mobile phone detection cameras to identify those motorists who are not paying attention to the task of driving on our roads while behind the wheel but instead are looking away and entirely distracted, looking at a mobile phone or a similar device. If you are driving a vehicle, you are behind the wheel and you are looking at a mobile phone you may as well be driving blindfolded. It is such a dangerous practice to be entirely distracted from the task of driving while behind the wheel. The evidence indicates that a person is four times more likely to be involved in a crash while using a mobile phone, even when it is a hands-free unit.

The latest data has shown that the number of drivers caught using their mobile phones has dropped by 86 per cent at locations where cameras have been introduced. While we realise that there is a behavioural modification element to that, it is encouraging that motorists are being made more aware to stay focused on driving and the task at hand.