The other side of the road toll statistics

Remoteness is a factor, with remote areas recording many more more fatalities per hundred thousand than major cities. In major cities, the fatality rate is half the national average.

None of this is any consolation for people who have lost loved ones in avoidable road accidents. But it helps shed some light on how we might further mitigate accidents and fatalities. 

Arguably, Australia as a whole compares favourably on an international basis. It’s also true that major cities – where the road network is more evolved and where traffic is more congested – is a very different proposition to regional and remote areas where road quality is nothing like the big cities, and where distances travelled are much greater.

If we were serious about reducing the road toll further, we are entitled to suggest that a focus on better road quality - and driver behaviour - in regional and remote areas will yield more results than a pernicious focus on minor transgressions in the big cities.

We are not getting worse as drivers nor are we taking more risks on the roads, which the simplistic focus on overall fatality numbers (rather than the rate per hundred thousand) tries to suggest.

POSTSCRIPT: 

The rate of suicides per hundred thousand people is around 11.8 - or more than double the rate of road fatalities (4.8). Males at 18.3 per hundred thousand are almost three times more likely than females (5.5) to commit suicide, and indigenous people (at nearly 34 per hundred thousand) have a record we should be ashamed of. And like road deaths, the rate of death by suicide is much higher in regional and remote areas than major cities. 

Suicide was the 16th most common cause of death in 2024 -with 3,307 total deaths (behind variuous cancers, heart disease and other health problems). That is 2.5 times as many died on our roads (1300 in 2024). If saving lives was the objective, would it make sense to invest more effort in things like suicide prevention?