Road Safety Strategy 2022-2027
Surf Coast Shire Council has adopted a five-year plan to improve road safety, while sharing the state and federal government goal of zero road fatalities and injuries by 2050.
At its November 2022 meeting, Council approved the Road Safety Strategy and Action Plan 2022-2027 'Coasting Towards Zero', which aims to address the ongoing and emerging road safety issues over the next five years.
The adopted strategy reflects the shire’s growing, yet ageing population, as well as an increasing number of cyclists and tourist drivers.
It also takes into consideration the shire’s ageing road infrastructure, as well as the introduction of newer transport forms such as motorised bicycles, scooters and electric cars.
Throughout the Road Safety Strategy and Action Plan development, Surf Coast Shire held a number of engagement activities with the community, internal and external stakeholders and Council partners.
This engagement has steered the direction and outcomes within the strategy, with a focus on five key areas guided by national and state road safety principles.
'Coasting towards Zero' provides us with a way of making strategic decisions about where Council resources are most effectively applied, to save lives and reduce road related injuries and trauma in our municipality. We apply this lens to all relevant requests from individuals in our community. This helps us to be equitable and take a wider view to consider the request in best interests of the municipal community.
Vision and Aim
The Surf Coast Shire Road Safety Strategy and Action Plan 2022-2027 has been prepared to address the ongoing and emerging road safety issues for Surf Coast Shire over the next five years. The Strategy is secondary to the national and state vision of zero fatalities and injuries by 2050, aiming to reduce the rate of people killed as a result of road crashes in Surf Coast Shire.
Strategy Principles
The key principles adopted by the National and State road safety strategies will also guide our approach in achieving the road safety objectives.
How does the Strategy work?
The strategy takes a shared approach to the responsibility for road safety and safety targets, making sure that correlation and coordination with other key local strategies and plans are ensured. The approach is evidence based, community and stakeholder informed, collaborative, and provides achievable, clear and concise actions to reach the goals. Monitoring and evaluation are a key component of the action plan, and tools to assess and assist the delivery of the outputs, safety indicators, and outcomes are provided.
Strategic Focus Areas
Designing and planning initiatives to reduce road fatalities now and get to zero road fatalities by 2050 requires a good understanding of the road travelling complexity, but also agility to adapt to current and future trends and changes.
To help us with that, and following our regional road safety strategy approach, five strategic focus areas will support us in shaping our action plans and initiatives.
The five focus areas, related goals and actions help to guide how we respond to community requests and where to prioritise our efforts and investment. The relevant parts of the strategy have been included in each of the most frequently requested areas of community concern to provide the strategic context for our decisions. The priorities have been based on what the community perceived as most important along with the analysis of road safety statistics and knowledge.