responsible drivers who take too many small risks

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/wa/9431339/good-drivers-crash-more-than-hoons/


So-called responsible drivers who take too many small risks - such as travelling a bit over the speed limit - cause more serious traffic crashes than hoons, a key road safety adviser says.

Professor D'Arcy Holman, who chairs the WA Road Safety Council, said it was a myth that hoons driving at reckless speeds were the worst menace on WA roads.

A far bigger problem was the thousands of generally "good" drivers who took frequent smaller risks, such as low-level speeding.

They contributed to 3000 fatalities and serious injuries each year.

"We certainly don't want anti-social hoon behaviour on our roads but it's the less conspicuous speeding behaviour of the general public that really matters in terms of safety outcomes," he said.

"We need to target not so much the high-risk behaviour by a few but go after the majority.

"Hoon drivers massively increase their risk of a crash but the bottom line is not many people do that whereas you have many drivers going over the limit, which even by 5km/h doubles the risk of a crash."

Professor Holman, a public health expert, said motorists were generally slowing down.

New figures from Main Roads showed six per cent of metropolitan drivers exceeded the speed limit by 10km/h or more last year, down from 13 per cent in 2000.

Nine per cent of country drivers were speeding a decade ago but this fell to five per cent last year.

He said speed cameras were likely to have been the strongest deterrent because many people eventually got sick of paying fines.

"I think most people would be pleasantly surprised by the figures because we've had some people infer WA's speeding behaviour is out of control and that's not the case," he said.

But he said WA still had the worst road safety record in Australia.

He said this was often wrongly blamed on the size of the State and people driving long distances.

He also warned the number of crashes could rise significantly because of the State's economic boom.

"I'm worried that our economic prosperity will push up the number of road crashes because as the gross domestic product goes up, which is generally a good thing for our health, it means more people will buy cars and spend longer on the roads," he said.

"WA is the economic powerhouse of the country so it has special responsibility to put money back into infrastructure and it's well within our capacity to meet the costs of fixing up our roads."

Professor Holman said audible edge lining and wider shoulders on country roads were a good start and would reduce country road deaths.