Tuesday, Jan 19, 2016 at 00:34
Actually if you realy look at it ... the vast majority of the savings in road deaths will be due to vastly improved vehicle safety, followed by vastly improved roads., and vastly improved emergency medical care.
I seem to remember that
seat belts where only compulsory in all states from 1972. self adjusting retracting seatbelts where neither compulsory or widely installed.
In 1975 most cars on the road did not have side intrusion bars or crumple zones.
Colapsable steering collumns where not universally installed. ... many died because of chest or facial injuries from rigid streeing collums
A lot of vehicles of the period had reputations for horriffic lower limb injuries, that often resulted in rapid blood loss.
In 1975, a very large proportion of the australian vehicle fleet would have been on crossply tyres and drum brakes.
Well into the 80's most of the fast high performance cars where a real handfull and tretcherous as hell. they killed many youg men. .....
The motorbikes where even worse... the Kawasaki MK3 500, the fastest production bike of 1974 did 170+Mph on drum brakes, but it did corner better than the Honda 4 750 that the
police where riding.
While the second edition of the Australian Design Rules came into effect in 1969 ...... their use was not nationally legeslated till 1989.
It takes decades for new and safer cars to replace the older ones in the national car fleet.
By 1995 in QLD more than 600 died each year on our roads.
Speaking of roads.
Into the late 80's most of the main highway from
Brisbane to the
Gold Coast was still a two lane undivided road, likewise many other of our main highways.
That road is now 6 lanes most of the way with a wide hard shoulder and a concrete barrier up the centre.
The coast highway
Brisbane to
Sydney was a horror stretch that accounted for many deaths each year and the Newel was not a hell of a lot better.
The highway
Brisbane to Townsville had numerous low level bridges that where not even current minimum road width with no more than a double white line down the middle and white painted wooden rails on the sides ..... my sisters husband could tell you exactly how many and name each one as he drove that road regularly.
then there was the Mulbrough stretch ..... a lot of people died on that before it was completely remade.
We did not have modern high traction pavements and a lot of our highways where little more than a couple of coats of spray seal.
Then there is emergency medicine ....... In the late 70's when my brother was knocked off his Suzuki by a truck ...and broke a leg in 5
places... he was taken to hospital in a converted station waggon crewed by a single ambulance man ...... who was trained in little more than advanced
first aid and had little more than some bandages and some laughing gas to work with.
These days ALL ambulances have two man crews and are properly traineed paramedics with
well equiped facilities on board.....who can properly stabilise a patient before they transport them to far better equiped emergency wards.
A couple of years ago, I pulled up to assist at an accident on the freeway ....... a
young bloke had bounced this car off both road barriers, there was not a straight panel on the car including the roof, most of the glass was gone and all the wheels pointed in different directions .... thanks to the
well designed vehice, the
seat belts and airbags both the driver and pasenger walked away with barely a scratch.
If they had been in a Torana or a Cortina ...... they would have been in a very bad way indeed.
The poloticians would like to tell us that their speeding fund raising and there piffling advertsing is doing the heavy lifting ........ that is rubbish.
We need a more visable
police presence on the roads, enforcing more than speeding and drink driving.
cheers
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