Safe System Principles and Vision Zero 2050 fail equity test on shared rural roads

In this, the fourth of six articles reviewing ‘Wildlife road kills versus Vision Zero 2050’, freelance journalist Patrick Francis questions why the Safe System principles used by the federal and state transport authorities to achieve their Road Safety Strategy objectives to 2030 and Vision Zero 2050 ignore rural road pedestrians safety and wildlife vehicle collisions despite knowing Safe System speeds that prevent the catastrophic consequences of high-speed impacts.

“The National Road Safety Strategy 2021-30 was developed by the Australian government’s Office of Road Safety in collaboration with state and territory road and transport agencies, and the Australian Local Government Association (ALGA), along with the Australia New Zealand Policing Advisory Association (ANZPAA), the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator (NHVR), the National Transport Commission (NTC) and Austroads”.

According to the National Road Safety Strategy 2021 – 30 and the National Road Safety Action Plan 2023 – 25 all Australian governments have committed to a vision of zero deaths and serious injuries by 2050 (Vision Zero) using the Safe System principles.  This is a system where the designers and operators, including engineers, planners, lawmakers, enforcement agencies, and others – share responsibility with road users for designing a road system that does not allow human error to have a serious or fatal outcome. 

Figure 1: The National and state Road Safety Strategies and Action Plans are all based on the Safe System Model which “work(s) to prevent crashes that result in death or debilitating injury” but ignore wildlife vehicle collisions as a contributor to vehicle occupant casualties. Wildlife are not mentioned in any of the Road Safety Strategies 2021 – 2030 and Action Plans despite being involved in around 50,000 vehicle collisions in 2023 – 24 and the number is increasing year on year. Photos: Patrick Francis.

The Safe System and Vision Zero are consistent with the approaches adopted by many countries and are in step with the United Nations current approach to global road safety through its Sustainable Development Goals and the second Decade of Action on Road Safety.

The National Road Safety Strategy explains that road transport is a complex system in which people, vehicles and road infrastructure interact. The Safe System approach ensures they interact in a way that creates a high level of safety, by anticipating and accommodating human errors.

The guiding principles behind the Safe System approach are:

• People make mistakes. A mistake should not cost anyone’s life or health.
• Physics determines the known limits to the amount of force our bodies can take. When a crash occurs (and they will continue to occur because people make mistakes), all the elements within the Safe System should  work together to ensure the forces created in the crash do not exceed the physical limits of our bodies and result in a fatal or serious injury.

The missing elements from the guiding principles across Australia’s regional and rural roads network as opposed to city, town and urban networks are equity for all road users including unprotected users, the role wildlife vehicle collisions play in causing vehicle occupant injuries and fatalities, and how to deal with both elements of safety irrespective of road safety infrastructure, figure 2A.

Figure 2A: The Safe System Model embraces driver mobility, driver behaviour and road infrastructure, but cannot account for unpredictability of wildlife crossing rural roads. Irrespective of how good or poor a rural road’s AusRAP star ratings is, data shows 1 in 41 wildlife vehicle collisions results in vehicle occupant casualties and sometimes fatalities. Photos: Patrick Francis.

Figure 2B: The Safe System Model used to develop the National and State/Territory Road Safety Strategies 2021 – 2030 lacks equity favouring vehicle drivers mobility and convenience over pedestrians and cyclists. This infographic shows how participants in the Safe System on Australia’s regional roads use three ways of illustrating the same point – Safe System Speeds. In practice these speeds are ignored  on some minor rural roads close to towns which have a default 100km/h or posted 80km/h speed limit. Sources: Left: Transport for NSW – 2026 Road Safety Action Plan; Middle  Austroads 2014; Right –  Engineers Australia December 2024; photos Patrick Francis.

In New South Wales the government’s ‘2026 Road Safety Action Plan – Towards Zero Trauma on NSW roads’ suggests that Vision Zero 2050 is no longer a Safe System reality goal. While the Plan does not acknowledge wildlife vehicle collisions as a road safety issue it states “The Plan adopts the Safe System approach to achieving a safe transport system, which in combination could cut NSW deaths by 90 per cent and serious injuries by 80 per cent by 2050 based on Australian‑first, in‑depth road trauma modelling.”  This is the first state government to acknowledge the Safe System model won’t achieve Vision Zero 2050 and casts doubt on achieving a 90 percent reduction in road fatalities. The Plan highlights the lack of equity in the Safe System Model which doesn’t recognise reducing speeds in identified wildlife spots can contribute to increased safety for road users as well as protecting native animals.

It seems there is no opportunity in the Safe System for collaborating with people and organisations that have knowledge and experience with wildlife on roads. It means road ecologists, biodiversity experienced farmers, wildlife rescue organisations and insurance company collision claims departments make no contributions to Safe System road risk assessments and safe speed assessments.

Figure 3: The Safe System principles behind the federal and state Road Safety Strategies 2021 – 2030 are proving inadequate to achieve their Strategies’ targets with the October 2024 death rate at 127% above target and annual fatality rate per 100,000 population 138% above target. Source: Source: BITRE Road Deaths Australia – Monthly bulletin November 2024.

Transport  Victoria (Vicroads) sums up the focus of the Safe System when it states a Safe System Assessment  “is primarily focused on road and roadside infrastructure and speed”.  As described in article 3 Transport Victoria use four methods to risk rate its roads, none includes pedestrians and cyclists sharing local government managed access roads outside town boundaries or wildlife vehicle collisions and the casualty rate continues to climb above targets in its Road Safety Strategy 2021 – 2030. Road user equity is not a component of any of the four methods and ignored when rural roads have 100km/h default and 80 – 100km/h posted speeds.

The irony in the Transport Victoria statement is it sets a default 100km/h speed limit on most regional and rural roads where the vast majority of wildlife vehicle collisions happen and a star rating has not been undertaken. This highlights the  rural road safety dilemma facing state transport authorities focus on driver mobility and engineering solutions where there is no or inadequate funding for infrastructure upgrades to improve their star rating (Figure 2 A left) and ignores unprotected pedestrians, cyclists and adjacent wildlife on private land (Figure 2B).

Instead of a default 100km/h maximum speed limit on rural and regional roads, an holistic and equitable Safe System would embrace a “Default Safe Speed” as provided by Austroad’s Table 1 in its ‘Model National Guidelines for Setting Speed Limits at High-risk Locations 2014’ and Engineers Australia in its ‘Towards safer to more liveable urban streets’ discussion paper December 2024 “to prevent crashes that result in death or debilitating injury”, Figure 2B.

When it comes to setting speeds Queensland’s  Transport and Main Roads (TMR) spokesperson notes “The setting of speed limits is a professional engineering service pursuant to the Professional Engineers Act 2002, and as such, speed limit reviews are required to be undertaken by, or under the supervision of, a Registered Professional Engineer of Queensland (RPEQ).”  The spokesperson makes no reference to equity amongst road users or wildlife on and crossing roads as part of engineers considerations when setting speed limits.

We do highway we don’t do wildlife

This demarcation between transport department road engineers and planners versus others interested in protecting wildlife from vehicle collisions is reflected in some experiences outlined by road ecologist Darryl Jones in his book ‘A clouded Leopard in the Middle of the Road’. He quotes one engineer planner as stating “We do highways. We don’t do wildlife”.

The Safe System Model and the Federal and State road safety strategies emanating from it are developed by a range of tools that generate road risk ratings using tools prepared by Austroads, which despite statements about consultation processes being available, give virtually no opportunity for other government departments, NGOs, or the public to participate in the decision making for setting speed limits on public roads in rural and regional areas. The tools risk rating any section of road are generated from a host of data including previous crash data, daily vehicle traffic, road and verge infrastructure  measurements. Wildlife road kills, insurance company wildlife vehicle collision claims, and wildlife rescue NGO data is not considered.

Figure 4: The Safe System Model uses a wide range of Austroad tools for state Transport Department engineers to develop risk ratings for roads. From top left Infrastructure Risk Rating Manual for Australian Roads; Safe System Assessment Framework; AusRAP road star rating; and Model National Guidelines for Setting Speed Limits at High Risk Locations. Sources: Austroads and Queensland Road Safety Strategy 2021 – 2030

Despite all the tools available to state transport departments for risk rating roads, the National Road Safety Progress Report 2023 highlights considerable dysfunction involved “While progress is being made, data for most lead indicators is not yet available, and proxy measures have been used in 2023. There are three lead indicator priorities – ‘safe roads’, ‘safe vehicles’ and ‘safe road use’”.

On the Safety Performance Indicators (SPIs) for roads the Progress Report states “States and territories are at different stages of collecting risk ratings for roads on their networks – with some almost 10 years old. However, under the AusRAP Strategy (administered by Austroads), all states and territories have committed to publishing their road safety ratings for arterial roads by early 2025. There are different methodologies used to measure road risk ratings. AusRAP uses a ‘star rating’ system, where higher star ratings (maximum 5 stars) signify a safer road. While this is a common method, it is not the only one.”

Interestingly the National Safe System Action Plan 2023 – 25 has called for a review of default speed limit on rural roads which should have been undertaken in 2023. When the responsible federal department, Office of Road Safety was asked where the review was at, it’s spokesperson stated there were no developments to report from the review of the default speed limit on rural and regional roads.

The Safe System looks as broadly as possible at all the elements that influence crashes:

• safe roads and roadsides
• safe vehicles
• safe road users
• safe speed

It means looking at how these elements interact and can work together to protect all road users. In taking a system approach, authorities also commit to the proactive improvement of roads and vehicles so the entire system is made safe, rather than just locations or situations where crashes last occurred.

The Safe System was the basis for the 2011 – 2020 National Road Safety Strategy yet according to the Australasian Trauma Society  it “did not manage to achieve even the modest targeted 30% reduction in road fatalities. Indeed, there were 9% excess deaths over the target period resulting in approximately 1121 deaths by mid-2020”.

The National Road Safety Action Plan 2023 – 25 describes the actions each state and territory government will undertake to support the implementation of the National Road Safety Strategy 2021 – 30 to reduce deaths and serious injuries on roads. The Transport and Infrastructure ministers responsible for implementation of the Action Plan state they will deliver an annual report showing how initiatives “…are progressing and identifying where efforts may need to be changed to achieve the greatest benefits”.

A search for an annual report from the federal government’s Department of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development has so far failed to find this annual report. However, data is available from state transport departments.

The Tasmanian Road Safety Strategy was adopted by the state government in 2017 and is based on Safe System principles. It highlights a government’s reliance on road engineering and vehicle technology for achieving its objectives of “Fewer than 200 serious injuries and deaths on our roads by 2026”. Given the Strategy ignores wildlife vehicle collisions as a contributor to road crashes, the authors are relying on “designing and maintaining roads to reduce the risk and severity of crashes; establishing speed limits that are more appropriate to the safety features of individual roads; designing vehicles that protect occupants, lessen the likelihood of a crash and simplify the driving task.”

Even with seven years of operation under Safe System principles, the Australian Automobile Associations review of Tasmania’s Road Safety Strategy indicates it is failing to achieve its objective as far as fatalities are concerned, figure 5A. In fact all the state Strategies based on the Safe System are failing road fatality targets, figure 5B.

Figure 5A: Tasmania has a road safety strategy based on Safe System principles operating since 2017 and after seven years has a road crash fatality rate increasing rather than decreasing. Source: Australian Automobile Association.

Figure 5B: Analysis of road fatalities across all Australian states and territories shows the Safe System principles on which the National Road Safety and state road safety strategies are based are not leading to a reduction in the fatality rate; the opposite is happening, fatalities are increasing. Furthermore the state road safety authorities have no national definition of national highways and high-speed roads for determining fatalities on these roads and limited data available from the states makes it impossible to track the incidence of serious injuries — let alone progress on this target since 2021. Source: Australian Automobile Association.

The Safe System contends that in all crashes, speed is a key element that determines the forces that injure people. Speed management is key to improving the interaction of all three parts of the road transport system. Speed, whether it is driving at a speed inappropriate for the prevailing conditions or driving at a speed over the limit, contributes to the risk of crashes and their severity. Even if the speed of the vehicle was within the posted speed limit and not considered the cause of a crash, the kinetic energy transfer impacts the severity of the injury.

The Safe System model recognises the impact of speed on human safety but not when wildlife are involved in a vehicle collision, Figure 4. For rural and regional roads where the majority of wildlife vehicle collisions happen at high speeds these tools provide no decision trees for engineers to limit speeds on sections where wildlife collisions are common.

Austroads Model National Guidelines for Setting Speed Limits at High-risk Locations demonstrates the conundrum facing state transport authority engineers setting speed limits and why it is more convenient to install yellow wildlife warning signs than reduce vehicle speeds to achieve Safe System speeds.  The Guidelines present the maximum survivable impact speeds for various crash types, figure 6.

The biomechanical tolerance speeds highlight why some crashes associated with motorists swerving to avoid wildlife are likely to be fatal on rural and regional roads with 100km/h default or posted speed limit. To survive a collision with a tree, speed would need to be 30 – 40km/h and a head on collision 70km/h. As for pedestrians walking or cycling on default 100km/h rural roads outside town boundaries, the vehicle collision speed must be less than 30km/h for a pedestrian to survive. No state Transport authority is currently willing to accommodate such speed reductions on inadequate infrastructure (1 and 2 star roads) rural and regional roads for human safety let alone wildlife safety.

Figure 6: The Safe System model underpinning the federal and state Road Safety Strategies 2021 – 2030 and their objective for Towards Zero death and serious injury is unlikely to be successful while the known facts about biomechanical tolerances to impacts on humans and wildlife by vehicles are ignored by transport departments and politicians who set unsafe posted and default 100km/h speed limits along most low infrastructure (one star) regional and rural roads. Sources: Austroads, Transport for NSW; photos Patrick Francis.

Importantly, the Safe System approach seeks to recognise the responsibility shared by all contributors to the elements of the system. Remedies should be sought throughout the system, in addition to road users being responsible for their behaviour. Evidently actions involving vehicle speed where wildlife are on and crossing roads is not considered a useful remedy and is ignored by the Safe System.

This is exemplified by the Transport for NSW Safe System Program approach to reducing collisions on rural and regional roads. It knows these roads are responsible for the majority of fatalities and casualties, and provides education material that states wildlife vehicle collisions cause 1 in 41 casualties on country roads (see Article 3). Yet its Saving Lives on Country Roads initiative has the stated aims of addressing what it refers to as “two key contributors to road fatalities and serious injuries on country roads: high risk curves and fatigue.”. Amongst the eight key treatments there is no mention of reducing speed along road wildlife hot spots, most of which are likely to have default 100km/h speed limit and lack collision life saving infrastructure.

The lack of recognition of wildlife vehicle collisions on rural roads continues in Transport for NSW’s 2026 Road Safety Action Plan. The  Plan’s authors virtually admit many rural roads are unsafe due to the default speed limit and are likely to stay that way because road infrastructure cannot be improved compared to major highways.  They state: “Over 80 per cent of the rural network has a default 100km/h speed limit whether they have safety protection features or not. This includes lower quality roads that give motorists limited chance to correct the vehicle if it veers from its lane. Given the low chance of surviving a crash at higher speeds, safe speed settings are needed to reduce crashes on these roads, especially on narrower roads where retrofitting of safety infrastructure is challenging.”

Given such a situation it would not be unreasonable to conclude that many NSW pedestrians and bike riders sharing rural roads outside town boundaries or drivers travelling through wildlife hot spots would be concerned about collisions with people or wildlife and the millions of wildlife road kills in NSW each year (2.55 million Daniel Ramp Uni of NSW 2002) . The Action Plan states it “gathered views of over 240,000 individuals and stakeholder groups …and identified the critical road safety needs and concerns across NSW”. Despite the fact that NSW has around 20,000 wildlife vehicle collision claims each year costing each owner an average $5000 in repairs as well as higher insurance premiums and psychological upset and inconvenience such collisions generate, wildlife collisions were not amongst the main road safety needs raised by survey participants.

The apparent lack of interest in wildlife protection and welfare on roads in the Action Plan survey is in stark contrast to 2023 survey of Australians by the Biodiversity Council which highlights that around 80% of the community wants more action by state, federal and local governments on protecting biodiversity including wildlife (details in article 6).

Figure 7: Transport for NSW’s 2026 Road Safety Action Plan surveyed 240,000 motorists to help set objectives. Vehicle damage, cost, and health care from wildlife collisions and wildlife road kills estimated in 2002 at 7000 per day  were not identified as significant issues amongst the NSW public for consideration in the Action Plan. Photos: Patrick Francis.

The NSW government has included a Smarter Highway Activated Vehicle and Environmental Systems (SHAVES) trial within it’s January 2025 launched five million dollar Smarter Highways program. This is described as “self-adaptive electronic signage with machine learning capability which is able to predict events and provide motorists with advance warning of hazards such as …wildlife.” It will be interesting to find out if the electronic signage will include reduced legal speed limits or will it be advisory only like the existing yellow wildlife signs?

Figure 8 : Transport for NSW knows the danger associated with wildlife vehicle collisions on NSW rural and regional roads but its Safe System strategy and 2026 Road Safety Action Plan for saving lives on country roads ignores wildlife while the state is not meeting it deaths per annum target. Source: Graph Australian Automobile Association Analysis; Table and Infographic Transport for NSW.

What the Safe System involves is clearly stated in Transport Victoria’s Speed Zoning Policy: “The management of speed is a key element of the Safe System approach which ensures that our roads are safe for all road users. The Safe System approach recognises that humans make mistakes, and roads should be designed in a way that people are not penalised with death or serious injury when they do.”

Transport Victoria also states in ‘Safe System Assessment Guidelines’ that  “The Safe System philosophy underpins Victoria’s strategic approach to road safety” and furthermore “Unsafe speeds can increase both likelihood and consequence of a crash.”

If management of speed is a key element of the Safe System then how does the Transport Victoria justify its  “default speed limit for outside built-up areas is 100 km/h”? Setting such a blanket 100km/h speed limit for minor rural roads with low  mobility function ignores the Safe System approach that “Humans are fallible and will inevitably make mistakes when driving, riding or walking” and should not be penalised with death or serious injury. Yet that is an inevitable consequence of kinetic energy transfer at such a high speed in any collision be it other vehicles, roadside fixed objects, pedestrians, cyclists and large animals, Figure 6.

In Queensland its Road Safety Strategy 2021 – 2030 embraces the Safe System but the Strategies’ authors recognise an important deficiency with it:  “In particular, the attempt to reduce the system into ever smaller components can lead practitioners to operate in ‘safe silos’ by failing to account for the broader system factors that lay outside the transport system (that is, in broader society), and the interrelationships of the Safe System’s component parts.”

Despite this deficiency the Queensland Road Safety Strategy authors contend they have taken broader system factors and trends that contribute to road trauma into account. But the enormous numbers of animal vehicle collisions recorded each year across the state as well as vehicle occupant deaths and injuries incurred as a consequence of wildlife vehicle collisions are ignored in the Strategy.

National Road Safety Strategy 2021 – 2030 authors state “the Strategy continues the commitment to and strengthening all elements of our road transport system under three key themes: Safe roads, Safe vehicles and Safe road use. Speed management is embedded within all key themes. The Strategy adopts a social model approach to foster a road safety culture across society and make road safety business-as-usual”.

This statement highlights the silos the National and State Road Safety Strategy transport ministers operate within. They make no mention of wildlife vehicle collisions under its three key themes. As for speed management being embedded in its safety themes, this is contradicted by the way some states mandate a default 100km/h speed limit or posted 80km/h speed limit for many poor infrastructure regional and rural roads. Setting such speeds and installing low cost yellow wildlife warning signs for the convenience of state and council road transport departments  when statistics show the majority of vehicle occupant serious injuries and fatalities occur in this speed zone is the antithesis of management.

Transport policy needs social equity added

Engineers Australia is encouraging a more socially equitable model approach to setting speed limits that should also apply on roads where vehicle wildlife collision casualties are happening. It states “Equity is rarely incorporated explicitly or assessed in transport policy, planning and design. An equitable approach is about continuing to learn about who has what needs, working to meet them and providing accordingly.”

It is promoting a three tier urban speed limit regime because “in the last decade, targets to reduce injuries and fatalities across Australia have not been met” by the Safe System model.

Evidence for lack of equity associated with the Safe System model is provided in  Austroads March 2025 Research Report ‘Keeping People Safe When Walking Stream 1:Recommended Pedestrian Safety Interventions’.

Austroads analysis reveals “that in rural areas, pedestrian crashes predominantly occur on low volume roads with high speeds, particularly at midblock locations. …Regarding Safe System interventions, it was found that current strategies, while effective for car occupants, are less effective for pedestrian trauma reduction. Traffic calming and Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) for pedestrians show promise in urban settings, but significant challenges remain on rural roads due to the catastrophic nature of high-speed impacts.”

Austroads then make’s an extraordinary admission which reflects on the deception provided by all Federal and State Road Safety Strategies around Vision Zero 2050. “In summary, while the baseline analysis indicates that pedestrian fatalities in 2030 are primarily due to the non-implementation of available treatments, looking ahead to 2050, the persistence of pedestrian trauma is expected due to the absence of planned interventions or inappropriate speed settings”.

The admissions that pedestrian trauma will persist to 2050 due to the catastrophic nature of high-speed impacts is understandable when responses from local government engineers are governed by the existing Safe System model principles.

In practice, most transport engineers manage vehicle speeds without considerations of equity. For example, the  response from a central Victorian shire engineer to a request to remove the default 100km/h speed limit on a low traffic volume, gravel lane outside a town boundary in the farming zone.  The lane is also used by pedestrians and bike riders and numerous wildlife are regularly killed in vehicle wildlife collisions. The engineer’s response that “Speed limits are set to provide an appropriate balance between safety and mobility”  makes no reference to the recommended Safe System speeds in Figure 2B and  acknowledges that average traffic speed on the lane is 78km/h. The fact that vehicle safe speed on a road shared by pedestrians and bike riders is 30km/h is seemingly outside the engineer’s jurisdiction.

The engineer concludes that after taking a range of “technical requirements for speed limit reviews into account” and that “Council is strictly bound to the Victorian government Speed Zoning Guidelines …Council Engineering Officers advise that the lane does not meet the criteria for a speed reduction. ”*** 

The engineer’s decision highlights a lack of equity for all road users and ignores Transport Victoria’s Speed Zoning Policy 2021 which states a  default speed limit such as the 100km/h on the local road “should only be applied to a road where it is considered safe and appropriate”, figure 9. It could be that Transport Victoria is ignoring the Safe System speeds on local rural roads used by pedestrians and cyclists and opts for a default speed because it is convenient and inexpensive to manage. So the Council engineer’s decision is correct, or it could be that both Transport Victoria and the council engineer just don’t want to bother challenging the status quo road risk rating and speed rating system, even though lives are threatened with serious injuries or deaths. As for wildlife welfare well that is ignored as it’s not a responsibility of Transport Victoria or the council engineer.

Figure 9: An example of a Victorian farming zone rural access lane with a default 100km/h speed limit, despite the fact that the Austroads Safe System speed for roads shared by pedestrians and cyclists recommends 30km/h. Austroads admits in a March 2025 pedestrian safety report that on shared  rural roads “the persistence (to 2050) of pedestrian trauma is expected due to the absence of planned interventions or inappropriate speed settings”. It demonstrates the Safe System Model’s lack of equity amongst road users and why Vision Zero 2050 is unachievable. Sources: Victoria Road Safety Strategy 2021 – 2030; Transport Victoria Speed Zoning Policy 2021; photos Patrick Francis.

Take home message

By ignoring pedestrians/cyclists and wildlife on roads the Safe System guiding principles for achieving Vision Zero 2050 road fatalities is unachievable. In other words vehicle occupants and unprotected people using roads will continue to be killed and injured for as long as speed related pedestrian/cyclist collisions, wildlife vehicle collisions and run-off road collisions caused by swerving to avoid wildlife are ignored.

To correct this situation and make Vision Zero 2050 a remote possibility rather than aspirational or just safety wash, all road transport department politicians and engineers need to incorporate road user equity and wildlife protection and welfare  considerations into the Safe System’s road speed rating guidelines, rather than solely relying on engineering, vehicle technology and road infrastructure solutions which on an 880,000km national road network will be capital cost prohibitive for all but the major highways and connecting roads.

This is beginning to happen in the USA* where some road safety experts are looking to include wider thinking to account for social disadvantage impacting road safety. To account for wildlife vehicle collisions additional factors and known human and animal biomechanical tolerances to collision impacts need to be appropriately adopted by road transport departments rather than the current one size fits all, low cost, ineffective, yellow wildlife signs installed by the thousands along posted and default 80km/h and 100km/h local and connecting roads.

Next article (5):

Taking the blinkers off road safety –

How wildlife vehicle collisions can be minimised

References:

Transport for NSW – 2026 Road Safety Action Plan

National Road Safety Strategy 2012 – 2030, Commonwealth of Australia, Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications, December 2021

National Road Safety Action Plan 2023 – 25, Commonwealth of Australia, Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, May 2024

BITRE Road Deaths Australia – Monthly bulletin November 2024.

Australian Automobile Association, Benchmarking the Performance of the National Road Safety Strategy September quarter 2024. October 2024.

Austroads ‘Keeping People Safe When Walking Stream 1 :Recommended Pedestrian Safety Interventions’, Research Report AP-R730-25 March 2025

Austroads, Model National Guidelines for Setting Speed Limits at High-risk Locations 2014; Research Report AP-R455-14.

Australasian Trauma Society submission to Office of Road Safety on the National Road Safety Strategy 2021 – 2030, March 2021.

Transport for NSW: What you do next could save your life.

Department of Transport and Main Roads: Queesnland Road Safety Strategy 2021 – 2030

Tasmanian Government: Tasmanian Road Safety Strategy 2017 – 2026.

Transport Victoria: Speed Zoning Policy edition 2 December 2021

Transport Victoria: Traffic Engineering Manual Volume 3: Part 2.11 Speed Zoning Technical Guidelines.

Transport Victoria: Safe System Assessment Guidelines July 2018

Engineers Australia and Transport Australia Society “Towards safer and more liveable urban streets” Discussion Paper, December 2024

* The Safe Systems Pyramid: A new framework for traffic safety David J. Ederer  et al;  School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology,  USA ; Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives 21 (2023) 100905.

** Macedon Ranges Shire Council personal communication.

“Sharing the environment: Counting the cost of wildlife mortality on roads”  Dr Daniel Ramp School of Biological, Earth & Environmental Sciences University of New South Wales 2002