A long, winding road to end the carnage Just how much are Australians willing to pay to curb the death toll on the nation's highways, asks Simon Chapman. The concern about the holiday road toll invites a good many questions. Before any are addressed, the community needs to discuss the fundamental matter of what level of road toll should be considered too high, and its indelicate corollary of what annual road carnage the community would be willing to accept. Even Luddites like the Amish who eschew cars are occasionally killed by bolting horses and drays.
International comparisons give some idea of what lower road death rates are possible.
Among the 25 OECD countries, between 1987-1997, Australia's rate of road deaths ranked 10th, at 9.5 per 100,000 of the population. We could strive to reach Iceland's level, although with a total population of only 280,000, mostly in the capital, there is hardly basis for comparison. Western European rates of public transport use in cities of more than 250,000 people are more than double those in Australia and nearly six times those of the US, which has a road toll among the highest in the developed world. Even Italy, with its reputation for road anarchy, has lower pedestrian and motorcycle death rates than Australia. But Rome's urban rail, for example, carries 9.1 million annual passengers per line mile, compared with Sydney's much-lamented low usage.