Alan Griffin (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in the House today to highlight and congratulate the Australian Medical Association and the Australasian New Car Assessment Program—ANCAP—who have joined forces. Last week in Parliament House they launched a campaign, 'Avoid the crash, avoid the trauma,' which is all about focusing on new technologies to be standard features in Australian cars, in order to save lives. Particularly, the focus is on the autonomous emergency braking or AEB system, and the need to make it standard in all new cars sold in Australia. It is already standard, now, in cars in Europe, Japan and the United States because it is seen as being a very essential component to ensuring that cars are safer and therefore we save lives.

Some key facts with respect to this particular area are: 80,000 Australian lives have been saved due to improvements in road safety since the 1970s; technologies like AEB could be as effective as seatbelts in saving lives; AEB systems have shown to reduce rear-end crashes by more than 38 per cent and in some studies up to 70-plus per cent; and 90 per cent of crashes involve some form of human error. Automated technologies such as AEB assist by removing that human element and, as a result, reduce road crashes and associated trauma.

Autonomous emergency braking, by the use of camera and sensor technology, can detect the speed and distance of objects in a vehicle's path, which will ensure that brakes automatically respond, even if the driver does not. And that is why it is a very important technology to be utilised into the future. Unfortunately, at the moment, it is an expensive option, rather than an established essential in Australian cars, and that is why government and car manufacturers need to address this issue. We need to redirect car manufacturers' subsidies into programs that will facilitate faster introduction of AEB, support a nationwide AEB consumer awareness campaign, and ensure that fleets are updated and fleet-purchasing policies include AEB. It is also suggested that it is worthwhile looking at appointing a dedicated road safety minister, and I think that that is also something worthwhile considering. We need manufacturers to move on this essential technology with respect to the future.

The fact is that, even though we are seeing steady and significant improvements—and I am old enough to remember the 'Declare War on 1034' campaign in Victoria back in the late sixties and early seventies—we are still seeing the unnecessary deaths of around 1,200 people every year as a result of road crashes and road trauma.

So I urge the government to get behind this campaign. I urge the community to understand the need for this technology and I urge manufacturers to ensure that it becomes a basic in new cars in Australia.