Road safety experts have cautiously supported a contentious Queensland proposal to make drivers sit an online refresher test when they renew their driver's licence, with ACT Transport Minister Chris Steel ready to examine the proposal.
Mark Bailey, the longest-serving state transport minister in the country, has put the proposal out for community discussion after Queensland last year recorded the highest road toll in 13 years.
In 2022, the ACT also recorded its highest road in 12 years, with 18 people losing their lives in crashes.
So far this year there have been 80 road crashes resulting in injury on ACT roads, compared with 56 for the same three-month period last year.
The Bailey proposal will not suspend licences if drivers failed the online test, but aim to provide drivers with a "refresher" on road rules.
In a statement, Minister Steel said that a raft of road safety amendments had been introduced in the ACT's Road Safety Legislation Amendment Bill 2022 and the government "will examine outcomes proposed by the Queensland government in their effectiveness for reducing road trauma on Canberra's roads".
Lauchlan McIntosh, an internationally-recognised road safety advocate and the Canberra-based former head of the Australian Automobile Association, said any proposal which would make drivers value their licences more and not see it simply as an entitlement was well worth pursuing.
"We need to make drivers think more about road safety and the current system of tick-the-box, automatic driver's licence renewal doesn't serve that purpose," he said.
"Mark Bailey has been around a long time in that state transport portfolio and Queensland has had some very bad [road toll] results lately - as has the ACT - so clearly he is looking to explore some fresh ideas that haven't been considered before.
"Why not give it go? We need to consider a lot more fresh ideas in the road safety space because the reduction targets that haven been set across the states and territories won't be achieved if we keep doing the same things over and over again.
"Drivers need to attach a value to their licence and this is one way of doing that."
He said ideally, regularly reassessing driver knowledge of road rules should be a measure introduced nationally "but the current setup where each state and territory administers their own licensing arrangements doesn't allow that to happen".
Dr Soames Job, the former lead on road safety for the World Bank's Global Road Safety Facility and who led the scientific push behind the introduction of random breath testing in NSW, said this proposal might provide some benefit, provided it was carefully assessed.
"But if this was to happen, benefits are more likely [to flow] if the test included questions on penalties to remind drivers and [motorcycle] riders of the penalties for unsafe behaviours," he said.
"It's also critical to see the scientific evidence to support this [proposal], that it would change the crash rates.
"Ultimately in road safety, the solution is to build a better system. Because no matter how hard we try, people will still make mistakes."
Two people have died on ACT roads this year and a further five people have died on nearby regional roads, one at Sutton and four between the ACT border and Murrumbateman during the Easter long weekend.
Across the country last year, 1187 people died on our roads, a 5.1 per cent increase on 2021.
The 2011-2020 national road safety strategy failed to achieve its targets and a new federal strategy has now been set out to 2030, aiming for a stated 50 per cent reduction in road deaths over the period, and a 30 per cent fall in serious injuries.
The ACT government's new road safety action plan mirrors those same ambitious targets.
A report released by the Australian Automobile Association in February said "dramatic change is required if recently agreed targets are to be met, or even measured".
AAA managing director Michael Bradley said the "national approach to road trauma management continues to lack clarity and coordination".
"The strong targets [to reduce the road toll] agreed by government are welcome, but strong targets do not by themselves deliver better results."
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