The Fatal Four - drink driving, fatigue, speeding and not wearing a seatbelt – have long been the cornerstone of road safety campaigns. But according to Charles Sturt University (CSU) researcher Peter Ivanoff, “Not wearing a seatbelt might lead to injuries for the driver or their passengers, but it is not a cause of accidents. In fact, three of the ‘Fatal Four’ rarely cause road accidents.

 

“The ‘Fatal Four’ exist, no question about that, but they are overstated in terms of causal factors for crashes.”

 

He says alcohol-affected drivers are actually responsible for less than 17 per cent of all crashes. And while 40 per cent of all crashes are officially blamed on speeding, research from England’s Transport Research Laboratory shows that speed is probably the cause of road accidents in just four per cent of cases.

 

“I am not pro-speeding, but in many cases, speed is not a causal factor. The driver was distracted, had fallen asleep or for some other reason couldn’t keep that car on the road,” said Mr Ivanoff. “I believe that fatigue and inattention are the most understated reasons why people crash. But most drivers are not prepared to incriminate themselves, so we really do not know what role they play.”

 

Mr Ivanoff says the vast majority of road crashes – around 70 per cent – occur at urban intersections. “Every day in a typical country town or suburban street, there are people wobbling around, in and out of lanes, talking to their passengers and not looking where they are going. There are no police around to see it because they are out hiding behind a tree on a freeway.

 

“We don’t develop our drivers in this country. We say, ‘Here’s your licence, good luck to you!’

 

“Drivers should be able to recognise a risk or a hazard. There are basic things such as drivers approaching an intersection should have their foot off the accelerator and over the top of the brake pedal. Just doing something as simple as that reduces your reaction time by more than second, and cuts about 17 to 18 metres off your stopping distance.

 

“As to country roads, where there are a high number of road fatalities, the underlying reason is driver error, not speed. Maybe an animal ran on the road - that is a very common. The average driver without advanced training cannot swerve a car at 100 or 110 kph. They’re gone.

 

“Every year in NSW over 500 people are killed and thousands are seriously injured, all of them preventable. I really get annoyed when we have resources available to us and it is not optimally used.”