The Darebin Safe Travel Strategy 2010-2015 – a new approach to road safety.

Introduction: The Darebin Safe Travel Strategy is Darebin Council’s five year plan to make the City of Darebin a safer place to live and travel around for all residents and visitors. The Darebin Safe Travel Strategy adopts an innovative approach to safe travel by seeking to protect the most vulnerable road users – pedestrians and cyclists.
The Darebin Safe Travel Strategy is based on a vulnerability/impact spectrum of travel modes which assigns responsibility for safe travel in a non-traditional fashion; ensuring behaviour of people using high-impact travel modes protects those people using vulnerable modes.
Methods: Steering group of key stakeholders, community consultation, analysis of local crash statistics, international best practice benchmarking.
Results: Darebin’s Safe Travel Strategy was adopted by Darebin Council in November 2010, and praise by the community upon its launch. It leads the sector by example and commits Darebin City Council to a modern approach to protecting vulnerable road users. The strategy has engaged all key stakeholders to ensure successful delivery.
Conclusions: Reducing the volume and speed of vehicles is essential to lowering the number and severity of crashes and injuries caused to road users. The Darebin Safe Travel Strategy places the onus of road safety on those with the highest negative impact on safe travel to protect those most vulnerable in the transport system. This will be done through reducing vehicle trips, reducing vehicle speeds, and encouraging safer driving through a combination of encouragement, education, enforcement, and infrastructure.