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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-09-29 Daily Xml
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SAFE OCTOBER

Mrs VLAHOS (Taylor) (14:58): My question is to the Minister for Road Safety. Can the minister provide the house with the details of the Safe October road safety campaign?

The Hon. T.R. KENYON (Newland—Minister for Recreation, Sport and Racing, Minister for Road Safety, Minister for Veterans' Affairs, Minister Assisting the Premier with South Australia's Strategic Plan, Minister Assisting the Minister for Employment, Training and Further Education) (14:58): This morning, I was very pleased to be able to be present at the launch of Safe October. Safe October is a month of concentration on road safety in this state. It involves the Motor Accident Commission, the South Australian Police and the government in a number of items. It is brought about mainly by the fact that every now and then we have a terrible month in South Australia, and every now and then our figures spike up. If we can have a bad month, then it is possible for us to have a good month.

We are getting very close this year to exceeding last year's road toll, and that would be a bad result for the state, so police have decided that, for the month of October, they are going to enforce very heavily and visibly the 'fatal five': drink-driving or drink and drug driving, speeding, wearing of seatbelts, inattention or driver distraction—one of the chief causes of inattention is the use of mobile phones, both texting and for voice calls—so police will be targeting those very heavily. I particularly encourage them to target seatbelt wearing. If they do that, we would make a very large leap forward in our road safety outcomes.

Last year in October there were 12 fatalities and, obviously, the target this year is to get that much closer to the three that we had in September last year. It is an excellent initiative of the police. It has received excellent cooperation from the Motor Accident Commission. I will be launching in the next week or so a strategy on how the government is planning to improve road safety in the state. I look forward to doing that, and I look forward to the cooperation of all in the house who will hopefully be involved in that in a number of ways.

Tomorrow a lot of people will be travelling interstate and within the state for the long weekend. I take this opportunity to urge them to be patient, to be respectful to their fellow drivers, and to just take their time to get there safely over the weekend. There are two weeks of school holidays where people travel around a bit. Again, concentrating on road safety outcomes is a good way of ensuring that our road toll comes down. I would ask all members in this house to encourage their constituents to drive safely, especially over the next month, but also all the time.

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