The National Motorists Association Australia Inc. today revealed that 2001 police statistics and the recently released "Road Traffic Crashes in Queensland: 2000" show a gross misallocation of government resources. They called for more effective promotion of personal safety and a more realistic allocation of police resources.

"We always knew there was a problem. Now we have the figures to prove it." said Queensland Liaison Officer Mr Wright.

"After the introduction of last year’s ‘speed blitz’ road deaths went up. There is no doubt that police were emphasizing speed enforcement to the detriment of more beneficial patrols. Between December 21 and December 31, 21,962 traffic violations were issued for exceeding the speed limit (this represented 93.1% of violations issued in the period). Clearly the current speed enforcement is not saving lives. It is nothing more than a cash grab.", Mr. Wright said.

"Official figures indicate that 46 fatal crashes were caused by speeding. Compared to this there were 217 murders in Queensland last year. The total number of offences against the person including homicide, personal robbery, assault, and rape was 31,454. In other words, citizens are 5 times as likely to be murdered as killed by speeding and 100 times more likely to be the victim of an offence against the person than they are to die on the roads. The oversupply of resources to traffic enforcement and speed in particular is difficult to justify on the basis of personal safety. " Said Mr Wright.

"The current approach to speed enforcement is focussing on minor breaches of speed limits which endanger nobody rather than the type of speeding which gets people killed. That might explain why the road toll has been rising since 1998 and speeding causes 5% more fatal crashes than it did a few years ago. Indeed the Transport Minister has been publicly challenged twice to say that less than 7 in 10 speeding tickets are issued for speed limit breaches below 15kph and failed to respond."

Mr Wright pointed out that even if the enforcement was effective in targeting dangerous speeding and thus reducing road deaths it would still mean that a curious oversupply of resources were being applied to achieve a comparatively small potential benefit." "Disobeying traffic rules (not including exceeding the speed limit) causes twice the number of fatal incidents that speeding causes. However the vast majority of enforcement targets speeding. The increasing number and use of speed cameras highlights this ineffective enforcement very clearly. Speed cameras cannot detect other types of breaches of traffic rules. The use of speed cameras therefore makes absolutely no sense when you consider the statistics. Surely prioritising larger causes of crashes has more potential to reduce deaths and the overemphasis on speeding enforcement and an overemphasis on speeding for many years must be reaching some type of saturation point for effectiveness."

"Inexperience also shows up heavily in the fatality statistics but where is the plan to address this deficiency? If the government were serious about improving the road toll, they would make funds available to subsidise enrolment in advanced driver training courses to drivers in their first year on the road. For about ten million dollars (one quarter of the revenue from speed cameras) they could significantly improve the skills of as many as 10,000 young drivers. These improved skills will stay with them for the rest of their driving lives." argued Wright.

"The Queensland government continue to target the fatal four. However the ‘fatal four’ are the resulting behaviour of underlying causes. If we are to significantly reduce road trauma we shouldn’t punish the bad behaviour but should instead target the cause of all bad behaviour. This is where improved driver education has a role to play." Said advanced driving trainer Joel Neilsen from Safe Drive Training and author of "Attitude adjustment in young drivers".

"Research conducted with 10 000 novice drivers has highlighted the real fatal 4 to be overconfidence, inexperience, risk taking, and peer influence. It is my belief that the road toll would reduce if all road safety measures can be directed towards the real fatal 4." Argued Mr Neilsen.