A leading government expert has declared the national black spot program a "Band-aid" road safety solution that should be scrapped, and claimed inertia by successive federal governments is contributing to the rising number of road deaths.
Dr John Crozier, chair of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons' Trauma Committee and a leading road safety expert, was last year hand-picked by the Turnbull government to co-chair a review of the national road safety strategy.
The inquiry is due to report in April. However Dr Crozier told Fairfax Media that it was already clear the strategy will fail to meet its 2020 target of reducing the annual numbers of deaths and serious injuries on Australian roads by at least 30 per cent.
"There are 44,000 [people hospitalised after a vehicle crash] each year in Australia. We accept that as the price to travel on our road system. It's got to stop, we can't keep doing this," Dr Crozier said.
In NSW, 28 people died in car crashes during the Christmas and New Year period - twice that of the same period a year ago. Deputy police commissioner Catherine Burn described the toll as "horrific" and said many of the fatal crashes were preventable.
Annual NSW road deaths also rose for a second consecutive year to 392 people, despite a $300-million road safety budget announced last financial year.
In Victoria, the total state road toll of 255 was down on the previous year, however country road deaths have been steadily rising since 2013.
Federal Labor has called for a special meeting of federal and state transport and infrastructure ministers to respond to the road carnage.
Dr Crozier, a vascular and trauma surgeon, lamented federal government complacency on road safety, which he said has developed since the Federal Office of Road Safety was abolished in 1999.
"[It was] an independent body of subject matter experts, who would provide without fear or favour advice to the federal government," he said.
"There is an inertia ... For about 20 years we have been coasting."
Asked whether the 2020 road toll targets would be met, Dr Crozier said "No. I will be categoric".
Dr Crozier said the national black spot program, which targets road locations where crashes are occurring, was ineffective and funding should be redirected to improving whole road corridors.
"It's a flawed concept to wait until you've got hotspots of fatalities and serious injury before you then throw a Band-aid at fixing that bit of road," he said.
"We've got to get well past waiting for death or serious injury before we do something about it. We have to be much more proactive."
More than $684 million in federal money will have been spent on the black spot program between 2013 and 2021.
Dr Crozier said the program should be abolished in favour of "whole of corridor improvement". States should be required to provide evidence that the work led to reduced deaths and serious injuries.
He said road safety legislation should be harmonised across states, and accused the NSW government of displaying a "significant failure ... of political will" by refusing to apply point-to-point speed cameras to all road users.
The cameras measure a vehicle's average speed over an extended distance. Dr Crozier said while NSW should be credited for establishing 25 point-to-point systems, the cameras only target heavy vehicles, unlike similar systems in other states.
A spokesman for NSW Roads Minister Melinda Pavey said point-to-point cameras were "not a silver bullet fix" and it would listen to a variety of sources on road safety.
Dr Crozier's comments coincide with a pre-budget submission by the Australian Automobile Association, which said road trauma costs the Australian economy almost $30 billion a year.
It also lamented federal government inertia on road safety after gains in the decades to the 1990s, pointing to road safety funding to the Department of Infrastructure, Regional Development and Cities which fell from $18.2 million last financial year to a forecast $16.3 million in 2020-21. The money pays for staffing and administration.
The department did not confirm the figures, but said the government provides "billions of dollars to create safer roads across Australia".
It said in 1999 the responsibilities of the Federal Office of Road Safety moved to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau and other government agencies. Federal responsibility for road safety now sits with the department.
A spokesman for federal Infrastructure and Transport Minister Barnaby Joyce, who took on the portfolio last month, said "all ministers responsible for road safety looked forward to receiving the recommendations" of the review.
He said Mr Joyce "had an open book when considering recommendations and assessments of current programs".
Associate professor Jeremy Woolley, director of the Centre for Automotive Safety Research at the University of Adelaide, is co-chairing the review.
