Road manslaughter—or just the cost of progress?

Much to the frustration of road safety researchers, practitioners, and advocates, road deaths and injuries have not been widely accepted as a major public health threat. Currently, road trauma is one of the biggest killers and causes of serious and disabling injuries in the world. Although there has been considerable research on the causes of road injury and ways of mitigating the problem, there is still reluctance to systematically and sufficiently do what can be done to reduce this problem globally. This paper takes a historical review of the road trauma problem and responses to it. In examining developments in road transport and road injury, it is clear that the main impediment to reducing road deaths and injury has been a misguided preference of economic advancement over public health risk management. It is misguided because road trauma has impeded and does still impede the capacity of economies to develop. The challenge for societies now is to look at this false dichotomy—that of road development and motorisation versus road safety—and begin to make the right choices in favour of human society advancement through the development and management of safe road-traffic systems. A new ‘Safe Systems’ approach is emerging in Australia and spreading globally as a guiding principle for road safety. The evolution of this approach is traced and illustrated in this article. The need for finding ways to engender a stronger global political commitment to road safety is demonstrated.