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Saving lives and eliminating serious road injury top of the agenda at Australasian Road Safety Conference

With more than 1,400 people killed and 50,000 suffering major injuries across Australian and New Zealand roads each year the economic, societal and personal cost of road trauma is staggering. Globally, road trauma results in the deaths of 1.3 million people every year, or one person every 24 seconds.

These figures will be on the minds of every speaker and delegate meeting at the 2021 Australasian Road Safety Conference this week from 28 to 30 September. The Australasian Road Safety Conference is an annual event co-hosted by the Australasian College of Road Safety (ACRS) and Austroads. The 2021 Australasian Road Safety Conference theme is “Towards Zero – A Fresh Approach” and has major support from the Transport Accident Commission and Victoria State Government Department of Transport.

The conference was originally planned as a hybrid conference to be held in Melbourne and online but will now be conducted as a virtual conference with over 130 sessions, symposium, and plenary sessions with around 600 delegates from all facets of road and transport safety including research, teaching, practice and policy from Australia, New Zealand, and worldwide.

ACRS CEO Dr Ingrid Johnston stated “The vision of eliminating death and serious injury from our roads by 2050 is both essential and ambitious. The Australasian Road Safety Conference offers an excellent forum for sharing of quality research and programs that will help us reach vision zero.”

The conference program covers the five major topic areas aligned to the United Nation’s five Pillars of Road Safety: Road Safety Management; Road Infrastructure (Safer Roads); Safer Vehicles; Road User Behaviour; and Post-Crash Care, Data and Crash Analysis, as well as real world experiences.

Dr Geoff Allan, Austroads CEO added that “This is the sixth year that Austroads and ACRS have come together to host the Australasian Road Safety Conference. The research presented at the conference will have a significant and continued impact on road safety in our region.”

The support from the Transport Accident Commission (TAC) and Road Safety Victoria as part of the Victoria State Government Department of Transport (DoT) is intrinsic to the Conference.

TAC Head of Road Safety, Samantha Cockfield, said “Bringing together the best road safety minds in the world, including our very own from Victoria, will help us continue to address our road safety challenges and explore new ways of decreasing trauma as we strive to halve fatalities and reduce serious injuries by 2030.”

Road Safety Victoria Executive Director Carl Muller said “Road trauma continues to take a devastating toll on families each year. Coming together to harness insights from world-leading researchers and policy makers further fuels us to end road trauma as we work to deliver Victoria’s Road Safety Strategy.”

To find out more about the 2021 Australasian Road Safety Conference, visit ARSC 2021 Website