In 1965 car accidents killed 1151 people in NSW. In 2012 car accidents were responsible for 370 deaths.
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There are three broad ways to cut the road toll further, transport bureaucrats and other experts say: these involve changes in drivers, roads and cars. With regard toTHE DRIVER, Speed kills. So do alcohol and drugs, but speed kills more. Last year speed was a factor in about 40 per cent of fatalities in NSW, about the same as the year before. (Alcohol is a factor in 19 per cent of deaths and has been for about a decade.)
In NSW, Barry O'Farrell's government is doing something to compel motorists to slow down, committing to a massive expansion in the use of speed cameras.
From this year the number of mobile speed cameras in NSW - which move from location to location - will gradually increase from six to 45, while the number of speed cameras attached to red lights in the state will more than double from 90 to 200.
''We won't make more significant gains [bringing the toll down] until we get our speed camera program,'' says the general manager of Transport for NSW's Centre for Road Safety, Marg Prendergast, adding that she is ''thrilled'' with the program Gay has announced.
But some safety experts lament that Gay has gone only half way. ''While the introduction of extra speed cameras is good, it's got to go further and we've got to have covert speed cameras,'' the chairman of road safety at the Transport and Road Safety Research unit at the University of NSW, Raphael Grzebieta, says.
Covert or unmarked speed cameras are used in Victoria. But Gay's inclination is to tack the opposite way, ensuring there will be no shortage of signs wherever one of the new cameras may be in use.
''I don't want people's money, I don't want their licence, I want to save their lives,'' he says. ''If you get caught in one of our new mobile cameras you're either dumb or determined.''
Nevertheless, signposted or not, speed cameras work. They make motorists drive more slowly, which means they are less likely to have an accident. A survey by the auditor-general in 2011 demonstrated that on average fixed speed cameras in NSW reduced the number of fatalities in their area by 67 per cent in the three years after installation. Putting police on the road works as well.
Last year Gay's department, Roads and Maritime Services, and the police conducted a number of high-profile raids on trucking companies and drivers who tampered with their vehicles so they could exceed the speed limit.
The minister said police had reported a 40 per cent fall in the number of speeding heavy vehicles since the operation.
The number of fatal accidents involving heavy vehicles increased last year from 63 to 73 in 2012. But the bulk of those were in the early part of the year. ''Targeting operators, targeting generally, peer pressure within the industry has worked a treat,'' Gay says.
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