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Around 1,200 people are killed each year on Australia's roads and about 40,000 are seriously injured. Australia has a goal of zero deaths and serious injuries on our roads by 2050 [1] (Vision Zero).
The National Road Safety Strategy 2021–30 sets a target of 50% reduction in deaths and 30% reduction in serious injuries by 2030. [2]
 | This section needs to be updated.(November 2025) |
In Australia road deaths are reported at a state level as well as nationally by the Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics. [3] [4] Similar to New Zealand, Australia also reports national figures for special holidays, though usually only for the Christmas and Easter holiday periods.[ citation needed ]
In 2010, 1367 people lost their lives in road traffic crashes in Australia. [5] While strategies to reduce road deaths, including legislation, improvements to vehicles which help to make them safer, and educational programs have been developed by the national government, under the 1992 Road Safety Strategy, it is up to the local governments to adopt and enforce these policies. [6] The state of Victoria has implemented several initiatives such as speed camera, random alcohol breath tests, and an integrated state trauma system, which have successfully reduced the number of deaths caused by road traffic crashes. [7] Requiring motorists and passengers to wear seat belts appears to have reduced road deaths in Australia. [8]
Random breath testing ("RBT"), utilised throughout Australia, differs from the sobriety check-points commonly used in other countries. In Australia, random breath testing is accomplished by setting up a highly visible road block, wherein all drivers passing through are asked to take an alcohol breath test, regardless of whether there is any cause to believe the driver has been drinking. [9] RBT was shown to reduce alcohol related road deaths by 8–71% in fourteen different studies reviewed by Dr. Corinne Peek-Asa. [10]
In the state of New South Wales the agency responsible for managing roads and streets is Transport for NSW. The first listed priority in the October 2025 "Connecting NSW Strategy Priorities for Transport" strategy is "Towards zero trauma". [11] Daily statistics are published on the NSW Centre for Road Safety Statistics page. [12]
The Transport for NSW 2026 Road Safety Action Plan has an identical target to National Road Safety Strategy 2021–30. [13] : 11
In 2022, TfNSW commissioned Real Time Traffic with its partner Lab3 to provision a deployable computer vision technology to detect and report near misses and crashes weekly. Over a period of two weeks, 217 near misses were detected at two locations. [14]
'Road toll' is a legacy term used in Australia for the number of deaths caused annually by road accidents. While the term is still sometime used, most agencies instead using the phase "road deaths", [15] "road fatalities", [16] [17] "lives lost" [18] or "road trauma". [19] The problem with talking about 'road toll' is that "it implies that road trauma is an acceptable cost of having roads." [20] Journalists [21] [22] and media reporting guidelines suggest not using the term. [16]
