In
March 2021 the Australian Government Dept. of Infrastructure,
Transport, Regional Development and Communications
released its road
deaths data for New South Wales covering the twelve months
to March 2021:
NSW Road Deaths for March to March periods ending on 31 March 2012 through to 31 March 2021
In the 12 months up to 31 March 2021, “Drivers”
was the largest fatality group involved in a motor vehicle accident, the biggest fatality age group was those between 40
and 64 years of age and men had the highest gender fatality figures.
From 1 January to 31 March 2021 there were a total of 73 road deaths in New South Wales
In
March 2021 the NRMA also released its annual “Rate
Your Roads” report for regional New South Wales which
looked at the cost of road accident trauma.
Northern
NSW falls into the NRMA’s Townsend region.
Northern Rivers Total Road Trauma Cost Breakdown for 2014-2018:
Clarence Valley – $492,364,548
Tweed – $472,172,580
Lismore – $ 279,501,896
Richmond Valley – $278,021,556
Ballina – $223,471,769
Byron – $204,822,770
Kyogle – $138,242,279.
The
headline cost of trauma varies in the Townsend region from nearly
$500 million in Clarence Valley,
to around $16 million in Brewarrina. There is significant variance of
these due to the population and size of the road network of the
respective LGAs.
But
on average, the cost of road trauma is approximately $155 million per
LGA.
When
adjusted per head of population, each LGA is in a narrower band of
generally approximately $6,000 to $15,000 per person, with a few
outliners.
Some
LGAs might have a disproportionately large or small road network, and
a road trauma cost/km may be beneficial. There is a significant
amount of variance from around $8,000/km in Brewarrina to $300,000/km
in Tweed.
Adjusting
for both population and road network size might be considered a
pseudo-equitable outcome. On this specific metric, Tamworth Regional
LGA represents the ‘safest’ LGA in the NRMA Townsend region, with
a road trauma cost of $1.80/person/km.
In contrast, Walcha is the
‘least safe’ LGA,
with a road trauma cost
of $22.18/person/km. This means that after accounting for the
difference in the size of the road network and population, the Walcha
LGA has nearly 15 times more road trauma than Tamworth Regional
Council LGA……
Northern
Rivers “Rate Your Roads” 2021 survey participants gave
the following overall safety scores for the road systems in their
local government areas:
Ballina
– 47.50%
Tweed
– 47.16%
Richmond
Valley – 46.16%
Clarence
Valley – 38.39%
Kyogle
– 37.40%
Lismore
– 31.85%
Byron
– 30.61%.
