The Department of the Premier and Cabinet (DPC) has announced that a multi-million-dollar partnership has been entered with the University of Adelaide’s Centre for Automotive Safety Research (CASR) to research road safety until at least 2025.
According to the Department, CASR will receive a $1.5 million contribution from the State Government annually until 2025.
It said that over the next three years, CASR will focus its research on cost-effective road improvements, Aboriginal road safety, improving road user behaviour and driver fatigue.
Minister for Police and Emergency Services, Joe Szakacs said South Australia had made substantial gains in reducing deaths and serious injuries on our roads since the early 1970s.
“But no death or serious injury on our roads is acceptable or inevitable,” Mr Szakacs said.
“By working together with the Centre for Automotive Safety Research, we can achieve lasting change and create a safer road environment that protects South Australia’s road users, including the most vulnerable members of our community,” he said.
CASR’s Associate Professor Jeremy Woolley said that support from the government would allow the Centre to continue to add new tools to the road safety toolkit.
“Road crashes create a ripple effect through all our communities, and sadly most of us will know of someone whose life has changed forever due to a split-second event,” Professor Woolley said.
“There is nothing inevitable about injuries from road crashes- they are manageable and preventable,” he said.
‘While we often focus on past trauma, we also need to consider that almost 1000 more South Australians are likely to be killed on our roads over the next decade unless something changes,” the professor said.
