AMA's only Road Safety Committee seeks new members
South Australia is the only state where the AMA branch has a sub-committee focused on reducing the impacts of driver behaviour and road conditions on injuries and fatalities. Now, AMA(SA) Road Safety Committee Chair Dr Monika Moy is inviting AMA members from across Australia to join its ranks.
More than two decades ago, the Australian Medical Association in South Australia established a Road Safety Committee to address what members perceived as unacceptable levels of death and injury on our state’s roads.
In the years since, our Road Safety Committee has continued to advocate for better traffic conditions, explain the impacts of drugs such as alcohol and marijuana on driving capacity, and examine the impacts of new technologies and human behaviours on road safety.
Now, we are expanding our membership to include AMA members from interstate to join us as full and active members. We want to amplify the AMA’s influential voice to minimise road deaths and injuries. We believe the concerns of the original Committee of 20 years ago are more pressing now and extend across Australia.
Australian Government Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications statistics indicate 1,194 people died due to road trauma in Australia in 2022, and 39,600 people suffered injuries requiring hospital admission in 2018 (most recent year for which statistics available). Apart from the devastating personal and family repercussions, it is estimated that the annual cost of road trauma to the economy is approximately $27 billion, with direct cost to governments of $3.17 billion.
The AMA(SA) Road Safety Committee includes representatives from medicine, road safety and the Royal Automobile Association in South Australia (RAA). Recent areas of interest and advocacy include:
- the appropriateness of current legal blood alcohol levels
- personal mobility devices, including E-scooters
- medical marijuana and its implications for driving
- driving and the elderly, and particularly assessment of elderly drivers
- the adoption of new safety technology in cars.
We are most interested in new members from across Australia who share our goal of reducing the unacceptable road toll and who can commit to attending three or four meetings a year in person or via Zoom and to contributing to our development of relevant policy submissions and media campaigns.
We invite any AMA member with an interest in road safety or any queries about the Committee and its important work to email AMA(SA) Road Safety Committee Chair Dr Monika Moy at rsc@amasa.org.au.
