Australian road transport and traffic agency association Austroads has unveiled a new national dashboard to provide updated safety star ratings for major Australian arterial roads.
The new national Australian Road Assessment Program (AusRAP) dashboard are part of a nationally coordinated effort to identify which roads pose the highest risks of death and serious injury, and where road upgrades will have the greatest life-saving impact.
“We know not all roads are equal when it comes to risk,” Austroads chief executive Geoff Allan says.
“That’s why the focus of AusRAP is on the country’s most travelled roads – the highways and major arterial routes where millions of Australians drive every day, and where fatal and serious injury crashes are most likely to occur.”
“By publishing star ratings and crash history data on a single, national dashboard, we’re giving governments and the community a clear line of sight to where upgrades will have the greatest impact.”
Australia has a vast road network, and while many regional and local roads also need safety improvements, this phase of AusRAP is intentionally focused on the busiest corridors – where the risk is highest because of the sheer volume of traffic and higher travelling speeds.
This targeted approach, used together with or alongside other tools, assists governments to prioritise investments where they will save the most lives, the soonest. Future phases will expand coverage as new assessments and data become available.
“Road safety star ratings are a robust and trusted tool for communicating road safety information to the public, and Austroads is proud to coordinate and publish our members’ results,” Allan says.
“Importantly, these results provide a snapshot in time of the safety of our roads – and there is still much work to be done to reach our goal of having 80 per cent of all travel occur on roads rated three stars or better by 2030.”
Australia’s national AusRAP results are published through the interactive National AusRAP Dashboard, an evidence‑based tool that shows AusRAP Star Ratings, crash history metrics and traffic volumes, enabling transparent, accountable and evidence-based investment decisions.
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AusRAP star ratings assess how safe a road is, from one-star (least safe) to five-star (most safe). They reflect the level of safety “built into” the road, considering factors like road layout, speed limits, and traffic volumes – not driver behaviour. It uses the globally recognised iRAP methodology. Each additional star halves the risk of death or serious injury. Roads rated three‑stars and above are recognised as safer roads.
Alongside the star ratings, the dashboard presents crash risk using at least five years of data:
- Crash Density – the number of serious crashes per kilometre of road per year, and
- Crash Rate – serious crashes per 100 million vehicle kilometres travelled (VKT), indicating risk relative to how much a road is used. Traffic volumes (VKT) are also shown to help prioritise upgrades where the most trauma can be prevented.
When used together, star ratings and crash history results help decision-makers plan safety upgrades based on both the design of the road and how it performs in real life.
These star ratings support the national road safety target that by 2030, at least 80 per cent of travel occurs on three-star roads or better. This is part of Australia’s broader commitment to Vision Zero – the goal of zero deaths and serious injuries on the nation’s roads by 2050.
The move has been welcomed by numerous Australian ministers, including NSW roads and regional transport minister Jenny Aitchison.
“I welcome today’s release by Austroads of the AusRAP national dashboard. You cannot fix what you do not measure. AusRAP gives us a powerful national tool to improve road safety. The Minns Labor Government has proudly played a leading role in this initiative and will use AusRAP to guide road safety investment decisions that are data and evidence based,” she says.
“NSW is committed to doing everything it can to reduce the number of crashes on our roads. Every fatality and injury is a tragedy. We have already released to the public and stakeholders NSW’s safety star rating data, a move towards transparency that has been widely welcomed.”
Western Australian transport minister Rita Saffioti says the national initiative supports both increased road safety as well as a consistent evidence-based approach to identifying and prioritising high risk roads.
“It is encouraging to see that currently 82 per cent of vehicle travel on the WA state network is on three-star standard, or better, roads. We are committed to continuing to maintain and improve our state network to provide safer travel for all road users,” she says.
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