A young driver who swerves on a gravel road to avoid hitting wildlife makes a defensive driving choice however when you add youth, inexperience, outback road conditions and not wearing a seatbelt then the resulting choice and crash becomes horrific, another road fatality.

The George Institute an internationally renowned road safety consultancy is currently working with Government to develop a raft of road safety initiatives for the Northern Territory as part of the NT Road Safety Task Force.

These expert researchers base there work on world’s best practice in road safety and are making recommendations for the Northern Territory based on scientific research, transport legislation and operations in other states and what seems like a lot of common sense to me.

The real challenge is in changing driver behaviours and reducing road fatalities and roads accidents however I am advised that with all the road safety initiatives introduced including strict government regulation and harsher penalties we will still need ten years to effectively reduce the road toll!

Ten years is an unacceptable time frame for saving lives yet the scientific method and common sense debate dictates that changing driver behaviours will take this long.

And in the space of this enormous challenge the Country Liberal opposition want to open speed limits on selected sections of Territory highways in the wet and dry, day and night, for young and old for the sake of a perceived Territory lifestyle!

Road safety is everyone’s responsibility and that includes both sides of Territory politics and I demand we ‘draw a line in the sand’ on speed limits in the interests of saving lives and the trauma placed on the families and friends of those killed and injured in road accidents.

A major part of the Governments road safety initiatives being developed in the Transport Department is the Graduated Driver Learner (GDL) scheme which targets the most vulnerable of our road users, our youth.