Australia's Road Toll - 7 people killed every 2 days in the last 12 months

Let that headline sink in. 1296 people died on Australia's roads between April 25, 2024 and April 25, 2025. Divide that by 365 and you get 3.5 (and a bit) people killed on Australia's roads every day. This is like tolerating manslaughter. For perspective, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) records that 409 people were murdered in 2023. Fewer than a third of the roads deaths figure.

As far as I can tell, from daily media consumption, murder rightly draws public ire yet there's almost no outrage at the senseless deaths of people going about their daily business. This is fucked up! Murder certainly warrants public action, police work, active justice. Why do deaths, caused by weilding 2 tons of motor vehicle, weilded with compromised care or attention, draw media attention only for the spectacle of wreckage?

In nearly all car crashes, there is a liable party and a victim. Where there isn't a victim, it's nearly always 2 or more liable parties. Where is the outrage? Where is the public will to take action, assign responsibility for prevention, for causes. Why are we so willing to shrug off the utterly unnecessary, utterly preventable losses of lives? Why are we so willing to blame pedestrians and cyclists for their deaths when a driver who kills them was not paying attention, or worse, driving with disregard for the safety of others?

It is a fundamental responsibility of every driver to hold a licence, it's a fundamental responsibility of having that licence to drive with absolute care and attention to others, driver, cyclist or pedestrian. It's is an absolute responsibility of a driving licence holder to drive with absolute care and attention to the prevailing weather, road and traffic conditions. Yet we forgive most drivers of deaths caused, especially if they have survived, instead, blaming the younger driver (or a significantly elderly driver) on absolutely zero evidence. Why are we willing to blame a pedestrian (who should have paramount right of way) or a cyclist for their own death when every single car crash involving a pedestrian or cyclist comes down to driving with insufficient care?

In 2008, on the corner of Beach and Glenhuntly Rd, Melbourne, a cyclist collided with an elderly pedestrian, knocking the pedestrian to the ground, resulting in a head injury that was found in the subsequent inquest and trial to have caused the pedestrian's death. The cyclist was found guilty of causing the death. The outrage against cyclists, in the following decade, was huge. I experienced some of it. I experienced police bigotry arising from it, all the while riding for transport responsibly, yet told I was breaking unspecified laws. I watched as police all over Australia attempted to "fit up" riders for deaths of motorists, the most notable being a Queensland driver, while hooning and speeding on a roundabout, swerved to avoid a cyclist who was simply riding through the roundabout legally. The driver crashed into a nearby fountain, upside-down, and drowned. Every witness statement said the driver was driving irresponsibly and without care, yet police charged the cyclist with manslaughter. The charge was finally acquited in court, but damage to public opinion towards cyclists takes decades to undo. Nobody pays attention to a cyclist being acquitted, everybody pays attention to the initial charge laid. I believe that was 100% the intent of Queensland Police.

A decade and a half later, 54% of road deaths are victims, 45% of road deaths are purpetrators, a statistic that pretty much mirrors the state of play 15 years before. No inroads have been made in public safety, motorists still accuse cyclists of being "dangerous," despite our chap in Glenhuntly road being, as far as I can tell, being the only cyclist to have ever have been found guilty of killing a pedestrian in collision in all of Australia's history. I have hunted for evidence of others. I have used every rational resource available to me. I'm willing to conceded that there may be other cases, but they're rare. A way rarer proportion of Australia's average of 2 to 4 percent of journeys made by bicycle in the century-and-a-bit of widespread motoring than the total road deaths over that period.

Most road cyclists kill others in competitive races, due mostly to close-quarters, peleton riding and fatigue. Cyclists have never killed a motorists and, only one, on publically accessible record, has killed a pedestrian.

Yet the public rage when a cycling death happens (3.5% of the national deathtoll for the last 12 months), calling cycling dangerous, while motorists as drivers account for 45.7% of deaths, their passengers account for another 15%, pedestrians another 14% (remember only 1 actual pedestrian in Australia's history, or so, has ever been killed by a cyclist) and, for death toll purposes, I include motorcycles as motorists, increasing motoring deaths by 21%.

It's pretty evident to me that motoring safety in Australia is a public blind spot. 3.5 deaths per day is a pandemic, as simple as that. Australia's first covid death was around January 25, 2020 and, as of December 31, 2020, covid 19 had caused 909 deaths. That's an average of 2.9 deaths per day, compared to the road toll sitting at 3.5 deaths per day. Where is the commensurate response to the "sickness" that is Australia's motoring culture?

Bibliography
https://datahub.roadsafety.gov.au/progress-reporting/monthly-road-deaths
https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/crime-and-justice/recorded-crime-victims/latest-release
https://www.health.gov.au/resources/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-at-a-glance-31-december-2020?language=en
https://www.health.gov.au/ministers/the-hon-greg-hunt-mp/media/first-confirmed-case-of-novel-coronavirus-in-australia