The need for speed? Even this former F1 boss says it’s time for a rethink on road rules

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Few people could claim to know more about cars than Jean Todt, the former rally car driver who went on to become the president of Formula 1’s governing body FIA and general manager of Ferrari.

But now, in his role as the United Nations’ special envoy for road safety, he says it’s time for their reign over our cities to end.

Jean Todt says Australia has “all the ingredients to be more ambitious about the number of victims on roads”.Credit: AP

“It’s fascinating because I still love cars,” Todt said in an interview on the sidelines of the International Transport Forum in Leipzig, Germany. “But we need to accept there is an evolution in transportation, an evolution in the use of cars, and an evolution in what is allowed when you are a car driver. If you like speed, you go on a circuit, you don’t go on the roads.”

Crashes killed 1194 people on Australia’s roads last year – a figure that has hovered stubbornly around the same level for the past decade.

Some countries have almost halved their road fatalities over the same period. Australia now has seven years to fulfil the pledge made by federal and state governments in 2021 to reduce road deaths by 50 per cent by 2030 on the way to reaching zero deaths in 2050.

World-leading road safety experts at the Leipzig conference say it is possible for Australia to save those 500 lives a year, and point to countries including Norway (a 48 per cent reduction in annual deaths between 2010 and 2019), Greece (down 45 per cent) and Switzerland (down 43 per cent) as proof.

Todt with champion F1 driver Michael Schumacher in 2006 during his days at Ferrari.Credit: AP

“A lot has been done, but still a lot needs to be done,” says Todt, who led the Ferrari Formula 1 racing team from 1993 to 2006 during Michael Schumacher’s dominant period. He was later promoted to Ferrari chief executive and went on to become president of Formula 1’s governing body.

“Australia has all the ingredients to be more ambitious about the number of victims on roads,” he adds.

Worldwide, almost 1.3 million people die in road crashes every year – 90 per cent of them in developing countries – and UN members have also pledged to halve that toll by 2030.

But many of the strategies shown to be effective are likely to rankle car-loving Australians: reducing speed limits to as low as 30km/h in built-up areas; redesigning cities to protect and prioritise pedestrians and cyclists; and discouraging driving altogether in favour of travel modes that are safer for both people and the environment.

Nhan Tran, head of safety and mobility at the World Health Organisation, says reducing road deaths will mean reconsidering how people move from A to B, rather than treating it as one problem caused by people doing the wrong thing.

“Drinking and driving is a perfect example of how we focused entirely our efforts on the road user and said: that person was irresponsible, and the way to prevent that from occurring is to educate them, to put in place fines and create disincentive for them,” he says.

“But why do we put people in a situation where they need to drive after they’ve drunk? Give people options to actually get home. If you don’t need to use your car to begin with, it’s actually much safer.”

Tran says most road deaths and injuries are predictable, based on factors such as road design, high speeds and the mixing of vehicles and people. Places that have reduced deaths quicker than Australia have accepted that human error is inevitable and worked to redesign their cities and transport systems to prevent those mistakes having fatal consequences.

The best scenario, he says, is to move traffic out of busy zones, replace it with public transport and turn roads into pedestrian and bike-friendly areas. And where that is not possible, slow traffic down. “Even if you say, that was a pedestrian’s fault or the cyclist’s fall, who cares? It will happen and if you know that there’s a chance that it will happen, design the system in a way that prevents that collision from resulting in a death,” Tran says.

The UN Stockholm Declaration on road safety, passed in 2020, called for a 30km/h maximum speed on roads where motor vehicles mixed with pedestrians and cyclists.

London, Paris, Toronto, Helsinki and Brussels are among cities that have put the limit in place on some roads and have reported reductions in deaths and injuries.

Research shows an adult hit by a car at 30km/h has 10 per cent chance of being killed; this jumps to 40 per cent at 40km/h and 80 per cent at 50km/h.

But 30km/h zones are a rarity in Melbourne, confined to small trials in Collingwood and Fitzroy. Some built-up areas are 40km/h, while the default speed limit on other roads is 50km/h, and 60km/h on arterial roads. Thirty-three pedestrians were killed in the Greater Melbourne area last year, with little change to that number over the past 20 years.

Half of all Victorian road deaths happen on rural roads. Greg Smith, global program director at the International Road Assessment Program, says dividing rural roads with centre barriers to prevent head-on collisions is the key to stopping those deaths.

Where that is not possible, lower speeds are again necessary.

“On those sorts of roads, it’s not whether a head-on crash is going to happen, it’s just how long you have to wait until it does,” says Smith, an Australian now based in Vietnam.

“Sweden will not have people travelling at 80km/h now without a median [barrier] in between. And of course, no one dies in head-on crashes as a result.”

As for dealing with the backlash that follows any move motorists think might inconvenience them, Todt says governments and councils should do their best to explain why changes are necessary and then get on and impose them. He reflects on his controversial 2018 decision, when in charge of Formula 1 racing, to make the “halo” driver protection bar mandatory on cars.

“Everybody was against it. People who are telling me, ‘You are destroying Formula 1,’” Todt says. “Today, a driver will not drive a car without a halo because it has saved lives. If it must be done – even if it is unpopular – you must do it.”

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