Lives Saved by Accelerating the Implementation of Vehicle Safety
Technology in New South Wales 2021-22-0001
Australian vehicle standards are governed nationwide by the Australian Design
Rules (ADR) that specify regulatory standards for the safety performance of road
vehicles. The aim of this study was to quantify the number of lives saved on New
South Wales roads by accelerating the update of safer vehicles by aligning ADR
with global best practice represented by the new European Union General Safety
Regulation. The methods used in this study to estimate the impact of future road
safety interventions was a logical reduction of current crashes into future
casualty outcomes, the residual, based on what is known about delivery of future
safety measures and system improvements. A database was prepared including
information on all 2018 fatalities on NSW roads (n=347). The database contained
information for each individual crash, the vehicles and persons involved and the
road environment where the crash occurred. In the results of this study, it was
found that a scenario of aligning Australian Design Rules with the EU General
Safety Regulation on a number of key vehicle safety technologies could
potentially save around 20 lives annually in 2030 and around 90 lives
cumulatively, over and beyond the baseline trend, between 2023 and 2030 in New
South Wales. It could be concluded that vehicle safety has significant lives
saving potential, however, the time lag of benefit realisation will require
continued investments in other areas like infrastructure safety, speed
management and enforcement in the coming decades to achieve future trauma
reduction targets in NSW.