New road safety plan for Victoria
21 Jan 2025
It was disappointing that the government chose Boxing Day – when everyone, including journalists, were on holiday – to release their new Road Safety Action Plan.
Just four days later The Age ($) produced a major article on road safety for people walking, given the nearly 20% increase in the number of people walking killed in collisions with people driving vehicles, since 2018/2019.
There are some positives in the new Action Plan, but it’s hard to see anything that will turn that trend around.
It is the second in a series of action plans implementing the Victorian Road Safety Strategy 2021-2030.
The website says, “this action plan is the next step in delivering on an investment of over $1.1 billion to continue our commitment of halving deaths and significantly reducing road trauma by 2030, including $350 million for new initiatives.” But this appears to be a continuation of the funding for the long-term Strategy rather than newly announced investment. The Action Plan itself has no reference to new funding.
However, the press release says “to protect vulnerable road users like pedestrians and cyclists the plan will fund infrastructure improvements at more than 100 high-risk sites across the state.”
The Action Plan does not seem to anticipate any big changes in current road safety practice, but there are some positive signs around speed limits. The Action Plan says “we’ll update our Speed Zoning Policy and technical guidelines.”
Hopefully this will see changes to allow 30 km/h speed zones when councils want to implement them in activity centres, around schools or local neighbourhoods, as Victoria Walks has advocated for a number of years.
Currently, 30 km/h is not a speed limit option that is contemplated by the Speed Zoning Policy, even though the Government Road Safety Partners (TAC, Police, and Departments of Justice, Health and Transport and Planning) agree that 30km/h is the best speed limit when vehicles mix with walkers and bike riders. A change in policy to let councils deliver safer speeds for their communities is long overdue.
It would be great to see policy changes encouraging safer speed limits on arterial roads too.
The actions that relate to walking in the section on vulnerable road users are:
“We will improve the safety of signals at urban intersections that see a high interface between pedestrians and vehicles.”
“We’re rolling out programs to provide Safe System compliant infrastructure for cyclists and pedestrians.”
There is a focus on safe driving behaviour, including extending the Distracted Driving and Seatbelt Camera Program to detect people using phones while driving, in addition to longstanding speed cameras. Safer driving is of course important for people who are walking too.
It is worth noting that the Government was due to provide a response to the excellent Parliamentary Inquiry on vulnerable road users by 1 November last year, but no response has been publicly released.
Let’s hope the new action plan can help deliver safer streets. As our Executive Officer Ben Rossiter told The Age, “we need to have safer roads and safer environments that protect people walking.”