Corporate Road Safety: An Opportunity to Reduce the Road Toll Through Integrated Government Policy

Abstract

As a component of its National Road Safety Partnership Program draft strategy, the Australian National Transport Commission (NTC) recently consulted with stakeholders regarding the future for Corporate Road Safety in Australia, focusing on the major role that industry can play in improving road safety in Australia. This paper draws on and extends our submission, which can be seen in full on the NTC website. Contemporary road safety focuses on key public safety factors, yet globally few governments have explored road safety from an occupational perspective. Road travel is the biggest traumatic cause of worker fatalities in most westernised countries, and an increasingly recognised injury and fatality burden in many others. Corporate road safety is poorly addressed in existing Australian and other international regulatory regimes, with the work-road injury burden frequently falling between work and road safety policy and regulatory practice. In contrast, Work Health and Safety (WHS) regimes are well established in many countries. It is proposed that these existing WHS systems could be effectively applied to work-road safety to provide a framework for co-ordinated policy and cost-effective strategies to reduce the road toll. Based on experience and a systematic literature analysis, gaps were identified in existing policy and practice. Evidence-based recommendations were then developed to focus on reducing the road toll and related business costs. These include the implementation of strategic corporate road safety systems underpinned by existing WHS data, systems, strategies and policies.