The Australian Road Assessment Programme (AusRAP), led by Austroads, has today released an impressive new National Dashboard sharing road safety Star Ratings for major roads across five states and territories. It provides road safety information to decision-makers and enables drivers to check the safety scores for roads before they use them.

Over 71,000km of motorways, freeways and highways across New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory, Victoria, Western Australia and the Northern Territory have been ranked for safety out of five stars based on the iRAP/AusRAP methodology using assessments from states and territories and including traffic estimates and records of road fatalities and serious injuries. This represents 128 billion vehicle kilometres of travel assessed across the country.

The overall national result indicates that, of the roads analysed, 72.9% of travel occurs on roads that AusRAP rates 3-Star or better. This has been achieved with 53.3% of the analysed road length built or upgraded to 3-Stars or higher.

Users can explore the comprehensive dashboard to see the road safety results for selected roads including their Star Rating by vehicle kilometres travelled, fatal and serious injury crash history, and AusRAP survey data.

Story Maps, a Dashboard User Guide, AusRAP Explanatory Videos, Case Studies, Methodology Notes, and a link to the iRAP Star Rating Demonstrator to assess the safety of currently unassessed roads support users in their journey to understand the safety of Australian roads.

Data from South Australia, Queensland and Tasmania will be added to the dashboard when available.

Australia’s National Road Safety Strategy, issued by transport ministers in 2021, aims to have 80 per cent of travel occur on roads rated three stars or more by 2030.

By publishing the data publicly, Austroads Chief Executive Geoff Allan said governments and motorists could identify progress and where upgrades were needed.

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” he said. “This is a great starting point and all governments should be congratulated for going on this journey and making the data available.”

Gathering safety information and making assessments had ramped up in the past five years but was a costly operation for state governments, Austroads Road Safety Manager Michael Nieuwesteeg said.

“Every state is collecting data and using it to inform their investment decisions – it’s just not being assembled in the way we’ve assembled it,” he said.

iRAP CEO Greg Smith said, “We congratulate Austroads and all the AusRAP partners who have worked together to produce the AusRAP National Dashboard. It is world-leading and sets a benchmark for presenting Star Rating results that will inspire others. AusRAP has demonstrated the enormous value of using the globally-recognized iRAP methodology and data to support community engagement in road safety, guide policy making, and shape investment decisions. We look forward to more states’ data being added and regular assessment updates to inform and performance track the safety of road investment.”

It is anticipated that more details such as road crashes involving pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists will be added to the dashboard in the future.

Australia’s national road toll stood at 1,340 deaths as of July 31 – a rise of 2.9 per cent, with a higher number of pedestrians killed in road crashes.