If you believe the shock tactics of many state governments around Australia all it takes to be a safe driver is to make sure you stay under the speed limit. That’s it! An over simplified view, perhaps, but filed in the tell-us-something-we-don’t-know drawer is a new report from AAMI that declares “almost half of all crashes on Australian roads could be averted by drivers simply paying more attention”. Nothing could be more simple than that.
Commenting on the release of the 2008 AAMI Crash Index, Public Affairs Manager Geoff Hughes said, “Absent-mindedness is a factor in 44 per cent of all car collisions, with drivers much more likely to crash due to their own inattention than from speeding, fatigue and alcohol combined.
“While speed, fatigue and alcohol are factors in 37 per cent of car crashes, AAMI’s research shows inattention is the number one reason drivers crash into another vehicle or stationary object.”
Given the fact there is so much shock advertising in our daily media it is astounding to see that 34% of those surveyed knowingly exceeded .05 yet still chose to drive. A bit hard to pay attention if you’re pissed. Again, in keeping with the theme of inattention AAMI’s research showed that 20% of crashes happened due to a failure of a motorist to give way.
AAMI’s media release is shown below and the AAMI Crash Index can be downloaded from their website, or here on AUSmotive (700kb PDF).