Every year, Victorian road safety authorities announce fresh initiatives, updated targets and renewed commitments to bringing the road toll to zero. And every year, the number of people who die on Victorian roads stubbornly refuses to cooperate. Understanding why that is — and who is most at risk — matters far beyond statistics.
Victoria’s road toll has hovered in a frustrating band for the better part of a decade. According to Transport Accident Commission (TAC) data, the state recorded 244 road deaths in 2023, broadly consistent with the 265 recorded in 2019 and the 258 in 2021. The Towards Zero strategy, launched in 2016 as a joint initiative of Victoria Police, TAC, VicRoads and the Department of Transport and Planning, set an ambitious target of no more than 200 road deaths annually by 2020. That target was not met. It was revised. It has not been met since.
What ‘Towards Zero’ was meant to do #
Towards Zero was modelled on the Safe System approach pioneered in Sweden and adopted across much of Europe — the idea being that road design, vehicle standards, speeds and human behaviour should all be engineered together so that no single failure is fatal. In theory, it is an evidence-based framework. In practice, its Victorian implementation has produced real gains in some areas while barely denting others.
TAC has pointed to measurable improvements in seatbelt compliance, reductions in drink-driving fatalities and the uptake of advanced safety features in new vehicles as genuine progress. Fatalities on metropolitan freeways — where median barriers, speed cameras and high-visibility policing concentrate — have fallen noticeably over time. But the toll’s overall plateau suggests these gains are being offset, category by category, elsewhere on the network.
Motorcyclists: over-represented and under-served #
Motorcyclists remain one of the most consistently over-represented groups in Victorian road fatality data. According to TAC figures, riders account for roughly 15 to 18 per cent of road deaths annually despite representing only about three per cent of registered vehicles. Put another way, a motorcyclist’s per-kilometre risk of dying on a Victorian road is approximately 30 times that of a car occupant.
Road safety researchers and TAC both acknowledge that this disproportion has proved resistant to intervention. Several factors compound one another: motorcycles offer no crash protection equivalent to a vehicle’s crumple zone or airbag system; many fatal crashes involve single-vehicle events on rural roads where emergency response times are lengthy; and the rider cohort has aged, with men aged 40 to 60 now constituting the largest share of motorcycle fatalities — a group that tends to ride high-powered machines on weekends and may not have recent advanced training.
TAC’s motorcycle safety programs have emphasised hazard perception training and encouraged riders to seek refresher courses. Whether those programs reach the cohort most at risk — the confident, experienced, middle-aged rider who does not believe he needs training — remains an open question.
Country roads: a different risk environment #
The geographic split in Victoria’s toll is stark. Rural and regional roads consistently account for around 60 per cent of road deaths despite carrying a minority of total traffic volume. The reasons are layered. Country roads are narrower, less likely to have sealed shoulders, more likely to be unfenced, and frequently shared with agricultural vehicles and livestock. Speed limits that might be appropriate on well-engineered routes are sometimes applied to roads that cannot safely support them.
Emergency response is a compounding factor. A serious crash on the Calder Freeway near Sunbury will typically attract paramedic response within minutes. The same crash on a gravel road north of Mildura may not. Survivable injuries become fatal ones when time-critical interventions are delayed. TAC and Ambulance Victoria have both flagged this as a priority, and regional trauma networks have been strengthened, but road infrastructure investment remains uneven.
The TAC’s Country Road Code campaigns and its long-running fatigue messaging have had measurable effect on driver awareness. Road safety advocates have argued, however, that awareness campaigns cannot substitute for physical infrastructure — wire rope barriers on high-risk routes, consistent line marking, rest stops designed to actually encourage use, and realistic speed limits on unsealed roads.
Pedestrians over 65: a vulnerability multiplier #
Victoria’s population is ageing, and that demographic shift is visible in road toll data. Pedestrians aged 65 and over are over-represented in fatality statistics relative to their share of all pedestrian trips. Older pedestrians are more likely to be seriously injured in a collision that a younger person might survive, are more likely to be struck in urban environments — driveways, car parks, signalised intersections — and may have mobility or sensory limitations that increase exposure at crossing points.
TAC data and independent research from Monash University Accident Research Centre (MUARC) both point to vehicle speed as the primary determinant of outcome. At 30 kilometres per hour, a pedestrian struck by a car has roughly a 90 per cent chance of survival. At 50 km/h, that figure inverts. Melbourne’s network of 40 km/h activity centre zones and school zones has been expanded in recent years, and researchers at MUARC have found evidence of reduced pedestrian casualty rates in those corridors. The difficulty is that zone compliance degrades sharply where physical speed management — speed humps, kerb extensions, raised crossings — is absent and enforcement is irregular.
Where the system is still failing #
Road safety advocates who spoke with VCN on background identified several systemic gaps. First, vehicle fleet age: Australia’s passenger vehicle fleet is among the oldest in the developed world, and older vehicles lack the autonomous emergency braking, lane-keeping assistance and pedestrian-detection systems now standard on new cars. A 2015 vehicle — still common on Victorian roads — offers none of these protections. Fleet renewal policy sits outside TAC’s remit and has not been addressed with the urgency advocates say it warrants.
Second, enforcement resourcing: Victoria Police’s traffic operations capacity has not grown proportionally with the road network or the vehicle fleet. Speed and mobile phone detection camera networks have expanded, but human enforcement — which research consistently shows has a stronger deterrent effect than automated systems alone — has been subject to the same competing pressures as the rest of the force.
Third, the gap between metropolitan and regional investment. Road safety infrastructure spending in Victoria has historically skewed toward metropolitan corridors, where political visibility is highest and benefit-cost ratios, calculated on volume, appear most favourable. The rural 60 per cent of the toll does not generate 60 per cent of the political pressure.
What researchers say could actually move the number #
MUARC and other transport safety researchers have consistently identified a short list of interventions with the strongest evidence base: widespread wire rope median barrier installation on undivided rural highways; network-wide 40 km/h speed limits in pedestrian-priority urban areas; mandatory autonomous emergency braking on all new vehicles sold in Australia (a federal-level reform); expansion of alcohol interlock programs; and increased investment in regional trauma response capability.
TAC has supported a number of these measures and continues to fund research through its road safety grants program. The agency’s Towards Zero Action Plan, updated in 2022, acknowledges the plateau and identifies infrastructure investment and speed management as its highest-priority levers for the coming years.
What the data makes clear is that the road toll’s resistance to decline is not random. It reflects the concentrated risk borne by specific groups — motorcyclists, regional drivers, older pedestrians — in conditions that are, at least in part, addressable. The question, as it has been for a decade, is whether the political will to fund and implement those measures keeps pace with the evidence that demands them.
If you or someone you know has been affected by a road crash or trauma, support is available 24 hours a day:
- Lifeline: 13 11 14
- Beyond Blue: 1300 22 4636
- 13YARN (First Nations crisis support): 13 92 76
- Crime Stoppers (to report road safety concerns anonymously): 1800 333 000
