FAQs

Death and injury from road-related crashes (known as ‘road trauma’) is unacceptable to the community. While deaths and injuries on NSW roads have been trending steadily downward for decades, road trauma is still a serious societal issue that resulted in 271 deaths and 15,821 injuries in NSW (in 2021 and 2020 respectively), according to Transport for NSW data.

In the City of Willoughby, there are approximately 1-2 deaths and 150 injuries due to road trauma each year (according to Transport for NSW data from 2015-2020 inclusive).

While road safety is the shared responsibility of all road users, as the manager of the majority of the road network within its boundaries (including road-related areas such as footpaths), Council needs to take the lead in creating and maintaining a culture of road safety to reduce road trauma and help achieve Vision Zero (zero deaths and serious injuries due to road trauma) by 2050. This is an aspiration of the federal National Road Safety Strategy 2021-30 and NSW Government 2026 Road Safety Action Plan. 

The proposed Willoughby Road Safety Plan will demonstrate Council’s commitment to ensuring safe travel for all road users within the City of Willoughby and help achieve Vision Zero by 2050. It will include an action plan that will define specific initiatives Council will lead to realise this vision.

Yes, Willoughby Road Safety Plan will utilise the ‘Safe System’ approach, a globally accepted framework for understanding road safety. The Safe System has four elements:

•   Safe Roads

•   Safe People

•   Safe Vehicles

•   Safe Speeds

This is an approach that has also been adopted by the federal National Road Safety Strategy 2021-30 and the NSW Government 2026 Road Safety Action Plan. It is intended for the action plan of Willoughby Road Safety Plan to include initiatives that address each of these four elements.

The objectives of the Willoughby Road Safety Plan will be to:

• Lead a culture of road safety within Council and the broader community.
• Drive road safety improvements through delivery of a broad and multi-agency framework via several focus areas.
• Improve road safety over the short, medium and long term through ‘hard’ (e.g. the design of road infrastructure) and ‘soft’ initiatives (e.g. education and awareness campaigns).
• Continue to take advantage of federal and NSW road safety funding to achieve road safety outcomes.
• Reduce the number of road related deaths within the City of Willoughby to help achieve the federal and NSW Government’s ‘Vision Zero’ target of zero road deaths and injuries by 2050.

It is intended for the Willoughby Road Safety Plan to have the following main sections:

• Introduction
• Background
• Strategic alignment
• Focus areas
• Action plan

Road safety is a broad and complex societal issue and the factors that both detract and contribute to road safety are generally well understood. Nevertheless, there may be certain issues which the community and key stakeholders perceive as particularly important in the City of Willoughby. Council seeks to understand such perceptions and tailor the final Willoughby RSP document accordingly.

Community engagement will be conducted in two stages:

1. Stage 1 (Early engagement) will include a road safety survey on Have Your Say and invitation for initial submissions from the community (November 2022). Following this stage, a draft Willoughby RSP document will be created. 
2. Stage 2 (Exhibition) will involve exhibition of the draft Willoughby RSP – including a public briefing, meeting with key stakeholders and opportunity to make written submissions.

• Anyone will be able to make a submission. All submissions must be in writing.  
• Submissions are strongly encouraged to be made via Council’s Have Your Say Willoughby engagement platform at https://www.haveyoursaywilloughby.com.au/ . 
• Although this is preferred, Council will also accept submissions via email or letter at: 
  1. Email to email@Willoughby.nsw.gov.au 
  2. By post to The CEO, Willoughby City Council, PO Box 57, Chatswood NSW 2057, Australia

Use subject line ‘draft Willoughby Road Safety Plan – submissions’