To support the call for an inquiry, the AAA released the Benchmarking the performance of the National Road Safety Strategy report, which tracks progress against the NRSS target of reducing road deaths by at least 30 per cent by 2020. 

The report finds no real progress has been made since the strategy was agreed more than five years ago, with 1300 Australians killed on the country’s roads in 2016, a 7.9% increase on 2015.

AAA Chief Executive Michael Bradley said: “At a time when new vehicles and roads have never been safer, we need to understand why 40 years of progress is being so dramatically reversed. More than one thousand Australian families lost a loved one on our roads last year, while a further 30,000 are now dealing with life-changing serious injury. The human cost is immense, however road trauma is also costing our economy around $34 billion every year.

“This level of death, injury, and cost should not be accepted on our roads and it’s time the Australian Government sought to clarify why our national road safety strategy has stalled, so that efforts to reduce road trauma can be re-focussed.”