Driver behaviour dictates politicians’ attitudes to vehicle wildlife collisions
– the inconvenient truth around wildlife road kills
In the second article in the series ‘Wildlife road kills versus Vision Zero 2050’ about why vehicle wildlife collisions are not included in state, local and federal government road safety strategies, freelance journalist Patrick Francis reviews the published evidence behind the disconnect between Australian drivers attitude to maximum speed limits and the messages behind tens of thousands of wildlife warning signs installed across regional, rural and remote road networks. The signs are supposedly installed on these roads to alert drivers to the higher occupant casualty risk in a wildlife vehicle collision and to slow down.
Figure 1A: Despite vehicle insurance claims data and Wildlife Rescue NGO recorded animal deaths and injuries, most state Transport Departments set a default 100km/h speed limit on rural and regional roads and inform drivers of the risk with yellow warning signs and brochures they know are ineffective for reducing speed. Sources: Transport for NSW, Wildlife Victoria, AAMI, Transport Victoria (Vicroads), Queensland TMR, photo Patrick Francis.
Figure 1B: State road management and safety departments do not associate wildlife vehicle collisions with the doubling and tripling of annual fatality rates across regions compared to city crashes despite clear evidence that high speed and single vehicle run-off road crashes are the most important contributors in rural areas . Source: BITRE – Road Trauma Australia 2022 Statistical Summary.
Wildlife signs carry no legal speed limit requirements for drivers to adhere to and all state government transport departments questioned for this series of articles did not provide any decision tree technical guidelines about how they or local councils authorised to install them should make their decisions. This includes determining what sign is appropriate, the wildlife ecology basis for putting a sign on the roadway verge, land use outside the verge (wildlife Road Affect Zone article 5) and how often along a roadway a sign should be repeated.
Sign symbols and words are a ‘dog’s breakfast’ with no consistency between state authorities and sometimes even within state authorities. Transport for NSW seem to have two types, a symbolic one showing a kangaroo or other animal, the other being a word “WILDLIFE” sign. In Victoria VicRoads and local councils have a wide range of symbol signs, word signs and combinations of the two. Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads (TMR) categorises it signs for four uses. Perhaps the most difficult one to interpret is the symbol sign plus a word sign stating “NEXT however many km”. How does a driver interpret the however many kms and when do the x kms end? Why is there no sign after the prescribed number of kms to inform the driver the wildlife danger collision is most likely over?
Figure 2: In Victoria there are no decision tree guidelines provided by Transport Victoria (Vicroads) as to what wildlife road sign message to drivers is appropriate and how they should be interpreted other than slow to an undisclosed lower speed . Photos: Patrick Francis
The technical guidelines for wildlife sign use in NSW is minimal and states “This sign is not a’ prescribed traffic control device’. This sign may be installed by council(s) on the network they manage without seeking traffic committee or written approval from Transport for NSW”. In other words councils can put up signs wherever their road engineers feel appropriate.
Even the reason for installing a wildlife sign on a road varies between authorities. Is it for vehicle occupant protection from injury and death, to avoid expensive vehicle damage, to save wildlife from being killed and injured?
One NSW council, Lake Macquarie City, provides its residents with the reason why signs are installed “Signs indicating animals on roads have been installed to warn road users of a potential hazard to themselves, not necessarily for the protection of the animals. Wildlife warning and information signs are not specifically intended to perform an animal preservation role and their effectiveness for this purpose has not been demonstrated.”
As for where the signs are installed the council states “Wildlife signs are used on high-speed rural roads to warn motorists of hazards from animals that could cause damage or personal injury during a collision”.
In contrast some Councils and Queensland’s Department of Transport and Main Roads (TMR) have a wildlife protection agenda when installing signs particularly where there is an iconic and locally threatened species involved. Redland City and TMR’s smart signs project in a 60km/h speed zone (details in article 1) is an example of attempts to shift away from the one size fits all yellow symbol wildlife warning sign approach by providing an interactive message to drivers and sometimes a suggested safe speed below the legal speed limit.
There is a range of reasons why wildlife warning signs are such a dog’s breakfast of vague messages:
* Wildlife are so ubiquitous across Australia and their movement is mostly uncontrollable and unpredictable so road safety models such as the international Safe System principles which all National and State Road Safety Strategies are based on cannot account for them. Road ecologist Darryl Jones states “Accidents involving animals are almost completely unpredictable”.
The Safe System Model only works for predictable circumstances and attempts to achieve human safety (Vision Zero 2050) by controlling drivers behaviour with road laws such as speed limits, providing safe road infrastructure and roadside hardware, legislating driver safety behaviours (drink/drugs don’t drive) and including features in vehicles to protect occupants (seat belts, air bags, crumple zone). Vehicle manufacturers contribute to human safety by developing and adding vehicle safety technology options to legislated technologies for marketing purposes.
But not everyone agrees the Safe System’s current model is adequate because it cannot account for vehicle safety issues outside engineering and technology expertise such as the unpredictable nature of wildlife or the impact of personal income for purchasing safer vehicles. Lower income individuals are likely to drive older vehicles with fewer built-in safety features than wealthy individuals.
As well, there will never be sufficient funding to provide safe road infrastructure across Australia’s council managed lower traffic volume, regional and remote roads that are not “…needed to maintain higher speeds in line with the expected mobility function”. The expected mobility function highways and freeways are managed by states and territories transport departments and according to the National Road Safety Action Plan 2023 – 2025 total 217,054km. In contrast all other roads are managed by local governments and have a total length of 660,597km.
* Legal speed reduction is highly unpopular for politicians at local and state government level. On local government managed roads there seems to be a great deal of politics played by engineers rationalising road speed safety risk and Transport department speed zoning guidelines in favour of so-called driver mobility function and against the equity of all road users, particularly when a road is shared by pedestrians, cyclists and drivers of slow moving traffic like farmers on tractors and drivers sticking to the Safe System Speeds to avoid collisions with pedestrians and wildlife.
Engineers Australia highlights the lack of equity that happens in its ‘Towards safer and more liveable urban streets Discussion Paper’ December 2024 . It states: “Equity is rarely incorporated explicitly or assessed in transport policy, planning and design. Equity has various interpretations and applications but is generally about providing fair, just, and impartial treatment and distribution of resources, costs, and outcomes for everyone, no matter who they are or their circumstances”.
It is far safer for politicians’ and councillors’ re-election prospects to “safe wash” pedestrian safety concerns and wildlife road kills concerns with promises for more yellow wildlife road signs and social media safe driving education campaigns than demand legal Safe System speed limitsbe applied and be accused of revenue raising, Infographic 1. As well, yellow signs are far cheaper to install than structural measures to keep wildlife off roads such as exclusion fencing, culvert and bridge paths, and wildlife ladders.
Infographic 1: Safe System speeds for council managed 100km/h default speed limit and 80km/h posted rural roads shared by pedestrians and cyclists (all photos on one lane) are ignored in all State Road Safety Strategies 2021 -2030. Safe System speeds represent a radical change for most drivers and would generate complaints to politicians and councils when implemented for road user equity and safety and to reduce wildlife road kills. Sources: Austroads “Model National Guidelines for Setting Speed-limits at High Risk Locations 2014”; Victorian Road Safety Strategy 2021 – 2030; photos Patrick Francis.
Vehicle speed monitoring data in all states shows legal speed reduction is already compromised as many drivers won’t adhere to it as evidenced by around 40% of drivers currently travelling above posted road speed limits. Victoria’s Transport Accident Commission (TAC) has undertaken a Road Safety Monitor (RSM) since 2001. It’s 2023 Report shows 64% of respondents drove 3km/h or more over the speed limit and 25% drove 10km/h or more over the speed limit. Speeding in the 100km/h zones was most common and least common in the 40km/h zones.
In Queensland the percentage of drivers travelling above the speed limit in 50km/h , 60km/h and 100km/h zones was equal at around 30%. Amongst those risk takers who travelled above the speed limit there was little difference between low level excess speed and moderate to excessive speed, figure 3.
Figure 3: Queensland data shows compliance with speed in 50km/h and 100km/h speed zone is around 70%. Source: Prevalence and determinants of speeding in Queensland 18 August 2022.
The percentage of drivers exceeding the posted speed limit in NSW is detailed in the National Road Safety Annual Progress Report 2023. Data for 2020 shows 27% drivers travel above the speed limit in 60km/h zones and 40% above in 100km/h zones. Transport for NSW 2022 road casualty data shows 18% of casualty crashes involved speeding and 40% of fatal crashes involved speeding. 80% of the state’s fatal crashes occurred on roads in speed zones above 80km/h with the majority in the 100km/h speed zone.
Victoria’s Transport Accident Commission (TAC) has developed a Driver Behaviour Index for risky behaviour and provides analysis of it in the Road Safety Monitor Annual Report 2023. The drivers disproportionately represented in the extremely high risk category compared to the low risk category were:
* males 18 – 39 years old
* lived in rural Victoria
* drive an SUV or 4WD, ute, truck or commercial van
* drive 10,000km per year or more
In further analysis of driver behaviour TAC surveys found the frequency of drivers intentionally speeding 10km/h over the speed limit increased as the speed zone speed limit increased. So the most common speed zone in rural districts (100km/h posted or default) with the highest vehicle occupant fatalities is also the speed zone drivers are most comfortable with intentionally speeding well over the limit, figure 4.
Figure 4: Risky driver behaviour becomes more risky the higher the posted speed zone. Source TAC.
TAC has questioned drivers about hypothetical speed reduction policies for two situations:
* reducing residential speed limits from 50 km/h to 40 km/h and
* reducing speed on narrow rural roads from the default 100km/h maximum to 80km/h.
“On balance, drivers did not support a reduction of the residential speed limit from 50 km/h to 40 km/h (27% supported, 53% opposed and 20% were neutral). However, drivers were more favourable towards the hypothetical lowering of the speed limit on narrow country roads (46% supported, 36% opposed and 15% were neutral). Drivers who exceeded the speed limit, especially at high levels, were more likely to oppose reduced speed limits than non-speeders. High level speeders were also half as likely as non-speeders to support the hypothetical 20 km/h speed limit reduction on narrow country roads, with only about one third (32%) of high-level speeders in favour of the change, compared to half (48%) of low-level speeders and over half (54%) of non-speeders,” figure 5.
Figure 5: Over the speed limit drivers are less likely to accept lower default speed limits on narrow country roads despite the increased risk such roads pose to vehicle occupants and wildlife safety as well as vehicle damage cost. Source TAC
* Another reason why drivers intentionally speed above the limit was the perception that apart from main highways and freeways, rural roads speed limits are unlikely to be or are less effectively policed (Australian Road Safety Foundation 2019). Similarly the TAC Road Safety Monitor 2023 Report found “On average, speeders perceived a lower likelihood of being caught by police for violating road rules than non-speeders”.
There is not one mention in the TAC Road Safety Monitor 2023 Report of the association between vehicle occupant fatalities and collision with wildlife or swerving to avoid a collision with wildlife and hitting a roadside tree or other hardware. There is no mention of vehicle insurance company wildlife collision data, wildlife collision hotspots or Wildlife Victoria wildlife collision reports or the Safe System speeds. The issue around road signage warning drivers about wildlife on roads and possible collision is seemingly ignored.
The “TAC does not accept that death and serious injury on Victorian roads are inevitable and is committed to halving the number of lives lost and serious injuries by 2030, and eliminating deaths from our roads by 2050” so why are wildlife vehicle collision ignored in its 2022/23 Annual Report and its Road Safety Monitor 2023 Report? Why is the data around speed impacts on driver reaction time and stopping distance ignored and why is the impact of vehicle speed impact on unprotected road users not mentioned?
* Standards Australia motor vehicle frontal protection systems often referred to as bull bars or roo bars provide drivers with a sense of safety in the event of a wildlife vehicle collision, so that slowing down beyond wildlife warning signs is not necessary. Many regular country road drivers have equipped their vehicles with various types of vehicle frontal protection systems, so in the event of a collision no damage happens to the vehicle and hopefully nor to its occupants.
Figure 6: Vehicle frontal protection systems were once a feature on vehicles being driven in remote Australia, now surveys show 60 – 70% of 4 x 4 vehicle owners travelling in peri-urban districts are equipping their vehicles to avoid vehicle damage and repair costs. These districts coincide with vehicle animal collision hot spots identified by AAMI collision claims, Wildlife Victoria fatality data and higher than city fatality rates per 100,000 population in inner regions and outer regions (figure 1B). Photos: Patrick Francis
After spending thousands of dollars on such equipment, risk taking drivers have an expectation they can keep driving at or above the maximum legal speed on all posted and default 100km/h roads where wildlife signs are common and not damage their vehicles. The fate of wildlife struck at such a speed is seemingly of far less concern than getting to their destination a quickly as possible, let alone being injured themselves. Transport Victoria and Transport for NSW both have facts sheets about equipping vehicles with frontal protection systems.
Transport Victoria states “In rural areas, bull bars are used to protect vehicles in a collision with an animal (e.g. a kangaroo) or trees.” In contrast a Queensland TMR spokesperson states “There are no standards or design specifications for animal collision protection equipment – the standards relate to impacts on people, not animals.”
Transport for NSW states a bull bar is “a structure fitted to the front of a vehicle primarily to reduce damage to the vehicle in the event of frontal collision or an animal strike”. It refers to two types, a heavy duty bull bar and a low profile bull-bar. The department’s only reference to bull bars and wildlife is “Research carried out by Transport for NSW found that a heavy duty bull bar fitted to a sedan-type vehicle can exacerbate the damage caused in a high-speed (80km/h) crash into a kangaroo”. The damage caused referred to is to the vehicle not the wildlife.
So state authorities have differences of opinions about the application for bull bars in terms of their protection role for vehicle occupants and vehicle damage, but without any reference to wildlife injury, safety and welfare.
Further information provided by Transport Victoria provides even more revealing information about how appropriate bull bars are: “Market research conducted on our behalf suggests that many people fit bull bars to vehicles to either:
* improve the safety of their vehicle in a crash
* enhance the look of their vehicle.
We do not believe these are valid reasons for fitting a bull bar and strongly recommend not fitting one in these circumstances.
“A pedestrian can usually survive a collision with a vehicle travelling at, or below 60 km/h. However, if the car is fitted with a bull bar, the speed at which the pedestrian will survive is only 30 km/h. In other words, by fitting a bull bar to a vehicle, the pedestrian survival factor is reduced by 50 per cent.”
Table 1: The biomechanical tolerances of humans to vehicle impacts and crashes has been determined, but are not included in State road safety strategies or used to determine road speed risk rating in tools such as AusRap. Source: Austroads 2014.
This quote for 60km/h being survivable is contrary to the biomechanical tolerances of the human body to impact, Table 1 which indicates a pedestrian or cyclist hit be a car travelling at up to 30km/h is likely to survive 90% of the time, but at a speed above 30km/h the collision fatality rate rises sharply. The Transport Victoria quote for 60km/h being survivable is also at odds with National Road Safety Strategy 2021 – 2030 statement that “There is an estimated 10 percent probability of being killed if struck at 30km/h but this rises to over 90% at 50km/h”.
Engineers Australia also supports the Table 1 data stating in its December 2024 discussion paper ‘Towards safer and more liveable urban streets’, “the probability of death for a pedestrian hit by a vehicle at an impact speed below 30kph is fairly low but increases rapidly to 85% at an impact speed of 50kph
The question federal and state transport departments and Austroads risk rating tools are not addressing is whether or not bull bars lower the 90% pedestrian/cyclists survivability of a collision with an equipped vehicle at 30km/h?
The failure to connect this data to wildlife vehicle collisions is of concern and helps to explain the enormous discrepancy between wildlife vehicle collision claims of around 50,000 per year and estimate of around 4 million kangaroos and wallabies killed in collisions each year. Bull bars double the fatality rate of large animals and this could be at just 30km/h.
State road safety authorities require “Australian Standard AS 4876.1-
2002 Motor vehicle frontal protection systems” be used for bull/roo bars. How effective they are for safeguarding vehicle occupants is uncertain. VicRoads in its June 2021 Vehicle Standards Information 1 states “Bull bars are often fitted in an attempt to limit damage in a collision with an animal (e.g. a kangaroo)…. Laboratory testing demonstrates that most types of bull bars increase the likelihood of serious injury and fatality to pedestrians and other vulnerable road users. A bull bar may increase the damage to the attached vehicle if involved in frontal crashes at anything
more than a moderate speed. Bull bars should only be fitted to vehicles that are typically used in rural or off-road areas.”
VicRoads’ statement suggests wildlife road kills are a legitimate outcome when equipping vehicles with bull bars to limit damage in a collision with an animal. It also aligns with Transport Victoria’s advice to hit an animal rather than swerve to avoid a collision. Once again the fate of wildlife struck is not an issue unless they can be inferred to be “other vulnerable road users”.
* To avoid confusing drivers with too many speed limit changes. An example is spelt out in Transport Victoria’s Speed Zoning Policy 2021. Under Speed limit rationalisation it states: “The main purpose of the default speed limit is to minimise the need to sign the thousands of minor roads that exist across the state. A default speed limit should only be applied to a road where it is considered safe and appropriate.”
Given wildlife warning signs are common on rural roads with a default 100km/h speed limit and wildlife vehicle collisions are not mentioned in the policy then the Department does not recognise any risk to vehicle occupants from such collisions. This conclusion is further reinforced in the Policy where it states “It is essential that decisions on speed limits do not just focus on isolated sections of a road. Changes in the road standard and / or environment along a route may justify a change in speed limit. However, minimising the number of speed limit changes is a key objective.”
The policy places “minimising the number of speed limit changes” as being more important than vehicle occupant safety and wildlife protection from road kills on default 100km/h regional and rural roads outside built up areas. And it could mean even more casualty crashes.
Figure 7: Transport Victoria’s road safety vision, speed policy and technical guidelines are examples of how state government transport departments fail to provide equity for all road users and wildlife where it matters – on shared rural roads with default 100km per hour and 80km/h posted speed limits. Sources: Victorian road safety strategy 2021 – 2030 ; Speed Zoning Technical Guidelines 2021; Speed Zone Policy 2021; photos Patrick Francis.
Researchers at the Monash University Accident Research Centre have highlighted an issue with wildlife advisory signs and drive to conditions signs which are open to speed risk interpretation by each driver. They found “the evidence does point to a relationship between speed variability and crash risk. …Factors that increase speed differentials between vehicles may therefore have as much or more effect on crash risks as factors that increase speeds chosen by all drivers”.
Engineers Australia who do not consider wildlife deaths or wildlife vehicle collisions as a safety threat to vehicle occupants seem to support an alternative to the existing 100km/h default speed limit on country roads. It suggests a three tier speed limit as used in many European countries, such as:
* 30km/h streets with moderate to high conflict between pedestrians, cyclists and vehicles as in figure 7
* 50km/h local roads provide a potential Safe System speed for vehicle to vehicle collisions
* 70km/h roads provide a potential Safe System speed for car to car head-on collisions.
“This system offers a compromise between the safety and connectivity needs of walkers and cyclists and the mobility needs of drivers, but it does result in slower traffic and safer streets than the current Australian system. Transport Australia supports a change of this nature should be given serious consideration in Australia” Engineering Australia states”.
A driver’s sense of security provided by bull bars against vehicle damage in a wildlife collision provides an extreme example of why speed differentials between vehicles exist on regional roads. The unintended consequence of wildlife warning signs on default 100km/h roads might be that drivers who take any notice of them and have empathy for wildlife will drive slower than other drivers who adopt risky behaviours such as tail-gating, dangerous overtaking and cutting off or have vehicles fitted with bull bars.
Ironically the Federal Government’s 2024/25 TV Road Safety Campaign “Don’t Let A Car Change Who You Are” highlights such anti-social driving behaviour but doesn’t extend the message to include the impacts resulting from such behaviours in terms of wildlife vehicle collisions with the resultant increases on occupant casualties and road kills, let alone the resources redirected to vehicle repair, usually via increasing insurance premiums for all drivers..
The research behind this road safety campaign demonstrates the extent of silo thinking within the Department of Infrastructure Transport & Vehicles and the Safe System Model which road safety strategies rely on. Given the number of wildlife vehicle collisions each year across Australia, the campaign had the opportunity to highlight that drivers who are pet owners would not deliberately hurt their dog or cat at home but once in a vehicle on a country road the possibility of colliding with or squashing native wildlife raises insufficient concern amongst many drivers to even slow down passing a yellow wildlife warning sign.
Figure 8: The Federal government’s 2024/25 road safety campaign “Don’t let a car change who you are” recognises Australia road fatalities have increased 5.2% year on year (to October 2024) most of which happen on regional 100km/h roads but fails to give any recognition to regional road factors other than what’s covered in the Safe System Model which affect drivers speed behaviour “that change who you are” such as wildlife warning signs and vehicles being equipped with bull bars which research indicates results in vehicles travelling at different speeds; which in itself has been shown to generate more crashes. Sources: Department of Infrastructure, Transport, and Vehicles; inset photos Patrick Francis.
Next article:
In the third of six articles reviewing ‘Wildlife road kills versus Vision Zero 2050’ freelance journalist Patrick Francis interrogates the road crash statistics generated by numerous federal and state government departments for clues to why millions of wildlife become road kill each year.
REFERENCES:
Austroads Research Report AP-R587A-19 “Infrastructure Risk Rating Manual for Australian Roads”, March 2019.
Austroads “Model National Guidelines for Setting Speed-limits at High Risk Locations 2014”.
Prevalence and determinants of speeding in Queensland 18 August 2022.
Lake Macquarie City: Wildlife Signs (Animal Crossing) Fact Sheet.
VicRoads Vehicle Standards Information 1 June 2021 Bull Bars.
TAC Road Safety Monitor 2023 Report
Standards Australia AS 4876.1-2002 Motor vehicle frontal protection systems, Part 1: Road user protection
Transport Victoria (VicRoads) Speed Zoning Policy Edition 2 – December 2021
Transport Victoria: Speed Zoning Technical Guidelines December 2021
Transport Victoria Road Rules and Safety Bull bars
Transport for NSW, Technical Specification Requirements for vehicle frontal protection systems fitted to light vehicles, 2019
“Road design factors and their interactions with speed and speed limits” Jessica Edquist et al Monash University Accident Research Centre May 2009.
Vulnerable road users: National Road Safety Strategy 2021 – 2030.
Austroads: Model National Guidelines for Setting Speed Limits at High-risk Locations 2014
Engineers Australia and Transport Australia Society “Towards safer and more liveable urban streets” Discussion Paper, December 2024
