Your Life
A gold-medal performance is what’s needed on our roads
BRUCE McMAHON knows Brisbane will need to lift its game in traffic management long before the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games come to town.
Queensland’s Southeast corner is growing and growing. With that comes more and more traffic and increased silliness on the roads.
How about in 2026 we try and stay on the pace? Be polite to other road users. Pay attention. Don’t just rely on buzzers and bells to stay in your lane.
How about, to keep the place moving, we consider this from the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles: a car going 5mph (8kmh) slower than the surrounding traffic has a greater chance of causing an accident than one going 5mph faster.
“One of the most common reasons motorists drive under the speed limit is because they are driving while distracted. Typically, drivers are distracted by cell phones. They are paying more attention to their phone and trying to slow down to multitask,” reports The New York Times.
“Driving too slowly can make other drivers around you constantly brake and speed up. It can be frustrating for other drivers, cause confusion and could lead to an accident.”
Back here, Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner leads a push for mature, new-age approaches to reducing slow-moving traffic and congestion plus, in turn, exhaust emissions. He suggests the right decisions – allowing left runs on red lights, updating clearway times and the use of artificial intelligence – will help keep the city moving.
“We’re focused on practical congesting-busting solutions – from Brisbane Metro and the new bus network to improved clearway, using AI on transport corridors and the return of left turn on red,” Lord Mayor Schrinner says.
Today, Brisbane is a busier, almost 24-7 metropolis. So, extending clearway times on some major corridors could be on the agenda. Other answers may lay with ‘traffic-reading’ technology.
“When our existing system was implemented, floppy disks were the height of data management and mobile phones couldn’t fit in a pocket,” Lord Mayor Schrinner says.
“We are seeking advanced traffic-management solutions that can learn, predict, adapt, plan and control to optimise our existing network and make smarter use of the road corridors we already have.”
Left turn at red traffic lights was trialled between 2013 and 2021 at five to 55 Brisbane intersections at various times. It was estimated drivers made more than 15 million left turns on red, saving between nine and 30 seconds. It saved fuel, too.
The state Labor government shut the trial down, arguing there was a risk to vulnerable road users, particularly pedestrians. Yet, across bustling jurisdictions such as Los Angeles, drivers turn right on red. Mind you, many suburban intersections there – even up to five-ways – are controlled by stop signs alone. And pedestrian crossings are controlled by flashing yellows, rather than having to stop for a kid who’s pushed the button and darted across the road well before the light turns red.
Australian driving regulations are nanny-narrow. Rules keep multiplying and the road toll keeps rising. It’s time to get serious about driving, licences and driving lessons as a mandatory school subject. And it’s time for authorities to better correlate Australian road-incident data so there’s a far deeper, more nuanced understanding of the causes of road fatalities.
All that will help make it easier and safer to get around this corner of Australia.
