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Community Group Campaign For Road Safety Hotline
COASTTOCOAST100, an Australian community group dedicated to examining driver behaviour, this month released its National Road Safety Hotline discussion paper to all State, Territory and Federal Road and Transport Ministers’. The paper calls for a government funded National Authority to oversee a national road safety hotline number or website. The hotline would act as a reporting mechanism to enable all road users to report dangerous drivers.
The grassroots road safety campaign COASTTOCOAST100 was set up in July 2007 by Lyndal Denny on the NSW North Coast after she experienced a terrifying encounter with a truck. The group provides an open forum that actively encourages all road users to contribute to the road safety dialogue. The organisations website has been viewed by almost half a million people since it was established twelve months ago. It is out of this forum that COASTTOCOAST100 has made its initial recommendations to Governments on the best way forward in this vital area.
The discussion paper, while recognising a long term need for increased driver education and assessment, points out that in the short term the community is demanding a more inclusive approach to road safety. The high level volume of “traffic” through the COASTTOCOAST100 website is indicative of the importance communities place on the issue of road safety. COASTTOCOAST100 maintains that all drivers have the right to protect themselves on the roads and sees an intergovernmental agreement to establish a national, independent, effective reporting system as the most effective and immediate way of achieving this goal.
COASTTOCOAST100 is calling on all road users to read the paper and contact them with ideas on how to refine the proposal to ensure it achieves its goal of reducing the road toll.
Click here to download the discussion paper.
Visit the COASTTOCOAST100 website.
According to an article in the Herald Sun sleep-deprived shift workers are driving themselves to car crashes, trauma surgeons and early graves.
A study of 40 seriously injured Victorian drivers - which excluded those with blood-alcohol readings over 0.05 or with psychiatric conditions - found 48 per cent were regular shift workers, with a third finishing a shift immediately before their crash.
The head of the Alfred’s sleep laboratory, Associate Professor Matthew Naughton, said the results showed that employers needed to look after shift workers better, with 10-hour breaks between shifts, taxis home from work and limited weekly rosters.
Read the full article here.
The latest figures from Road Deaths Australia’s August bulletin shows:
• 135 deaths occurred as a result of road crashes in August 2008.
• To the end of August, 970 road crash deaths have occurred. This is a 9% decrease from the same 8 month period in 2007.
Download Road Deaths Australia, Monthly Bulletin; August 2008.
 A hard-hitting new advertisement launched this month portrays a fatigued paramedic fatally injured after crashing his ambulance into a power pole.
The advertisement calls on Premier Brumby to take urgent action on paramedic fatigue after the Victorian Government last month rejected demands for 10 hour rest breaks between shifts. Paramedics say longer rest breaks are vital if they are to do their jobs safely.
The ad comes after a survey among Victorian paramedics revealed 55 percent had fallen asleep or nodded off while driving. Ambulance Employees Australia has released material revealing paramedics in regional Victoria averaged 55 days of overtime last year — the equivalent of eleven 38 hour weeks. The documents show regional paramedics averaged 16 days sick leave last year, fuelling concerns Victorian paramedics’ extreme workloads are affecting their health. Melbourne paramedics averaged 32 days of overtime, the equivalent of six and half 38 hour weeks. They averaged 13.5 days of sick leave.
For more information visit the Victorian paramedics’ campaign website at www.responsetime.org.au
View the advertsiement here.
In its latest issue, iTech compares the latest in safe driving technologies including SmartDrive, DriveCam and Greenroad safety systems. The article examines on-board monitoring devices designed to help fleet managers identify and retrain risky drivers to reduce accidents and insurance premiums.
With these systems gaining momentum in the transport industry, some insurance underwriters may offer fleets incentives to install safety monitoring.
Read the full iTech article here.
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