AAA to campaign on road safety and funding integrity

The campaign is being launched ahead of next week’s pre-election Budget, and at the end of a week in which new figures showed Australia’s road toll has increased year on year in each of the past 31 months.

Australia’s motoring clubs want the next Federal Government to require relevant safety ratings to be published when major Commonwealth road funding is announced, so Australians can better understand project selection motivations. 

The Australian Road Assessment Program (AusRAP) and its five-star rating system is used by every Australian state and territory to measure the safety of the roads we all drive on and how potential upgrades affect safety outcomes.  Around 500,000km of Australian roads have so far been star-rated using AusRAP’s engineering protocols (also used in 131 other countries). Yet no Australian ratings are publicly available, meaning voters can neither see whether money is going where it’s most needed, nor assess the motivation of the politicians making funding announcements.

AAA Managing Director Michael Bradley said: “Australian voters are paying for the road upgrades being announced, just as they have paid for the safety assessments being kept secret.

“Our polling continuously shows Australians are concerned that political imperatives outweigh community safety implications when funding choices are made.

“With our road toll increasing in ways not seen since before the introduction of mandatory seat belts, now is the time for all parties to assure motorists that their taxes are being spent wisely, and that safety is being prioritised over politics.”

With significant road funding expected to be announced in next Tuesday’s federal budget, and more to follow during the election campaign, the My Safety Counts campaign will offer Australians an opportunity to directly engage with candidates to ask them for evidence about announced road proposals, and their views on evidence-based funding.

Commonwealth Government data this week showed 1,292 Australians died on Australian roads throughout the 12 months to 28 February 2025: an increase of 1.6% on the preceding 12-month period. The biggest year-on-year increases were in Western Australia (14.7%), Tasmania (19.4%), the Northern Territory (29.3%) and the ACT (233.3%). 

This follows four consecutive calendar years (2021-24) in which Australia’s road toll increased, which is a phenomenon that has not occurred in Australia since 1966.

Mr Bradley said: “Australia’s motoring clubs want this campaign to improve the safety of our roads, and the integrity of how they’re funded. Baking the publication of AusRAP ratings into Australia’s opaque road funding processes will finally show Australians whether project announcements are grounded in evidence, or whether they are instead aimed at winning votes.”

Australian motorists will engage with the campaign via mysafetycounts.org.au

The AusRAP Program assessment protocols target investment and reduce death and injury. AusRAP road safety assessments are based on the measurement and evaluation of risk factors, such as average daily traffic; speed limit; number of lanes in each direction; lane width; shoulder width; presence or absence of roadside barriers and rumble strips; gradient and curvature; quality of line-markings; skid resistance; whether road is single or dual carriageway; and provisions for pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists. 

The February 2025 data from the Commonwealth’s Bureau of Infrastructure & Transport Research Economics is below: