Governments must use data to fix Australia’s deadliest roads

The Australian Automobile Association says its analysis of 2024 road deaths by federal electorate shows the worst 25 electorates are all wholly or partly in regional and remote Australia.

The Northern Territory seat of Lingiari is the nation’s deadliest, with 46 deaths, followed by Parkes in NSW (38 deaths), Durack in WA (32 deaths) and Maranoa in Queensland (31 deaths) and O’Connor, also in WA (30 deaths).  

Australia’s 25 worst federal electorates for road deaths

Sources: Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics and The Australian Bureau of Statistics

AAA Managing Director Michael Bradley said the figures highlighted the need for governments to allocate funding to road projects that could save lives, not just to marginal electorates critical to federal election result.

“Road deaths are up across the nation and have increased in each of the past four years,’ Mr Bradley said.

“But our data shows the road safety crisis is hitting hard outside of our cities and this puts the onus on all political parties to assure Australians that road funding is being directed to the areas where it can save the most lives.’’

Mr Bradley called on politicians to agree to publish safety ratings on individual roads when announcing road funding so Australians could better understand what evidence was used to drive funding decisions.

He said more than 500,000km of Australian roads had been subject to safety audits and rated on a five-star safety scale using protocols of the Australian Road Assessment Program (AusRAP).

But this crucial data was kept secret.

“If this data was made public, people could make their own judgements about whether politicians allocate road funding to save lives or to win votes in marginal electorates,’ Mr Bradley said.

“It’s a simple, commonsense proposal that would improve road safety while also lifting public confidence in the integrity of government decision-making.’’

The AAA’s My Safety Counts campaign – being conducted during the federal election period – encourages motoring club members and other voters to contact their local candidates to urge them to back releasing AusRAP data.

Under the internationally recognised AusRAP system, roads are assessed according to engineering and other characteristics and rated on a five-star system – one star is most dangerous, and five stars is safest. AusRAP estimates that the risk of a person dying or being seriously injured on a specific section of road is roughly halved with each one-star increase to that road’s rating.