The Newell Highway Road Safety Review

The Newell Highway is the longest highway in NSW, stretching over 1,000 kilometres from the Victorian border to the Queensland border. It is a major freight route from Melbourne to Brisbane, as well as being popular with interstate travellers and tourists. This route was reviewed using a multi-disciplinary method developed by the NSW Centre for Road Safety based on Safe System principles. The review examined key road safety issues, which included the large proportion of fatal crashes, which are off path crashes, or rollover crashes, fatigue in combination with high travelling speeds, the relatively high proportion of head-on fatal crashes, heavy vehicle involvement in head-on fatal crashes, heavy vehicle and interstate controllers accounting for a high proportion of fatal crash involvements. The outcomes of the safety review of the Newell Highway varies from previous reviews due to the far greater length of road (over 1000km), environmental characteristics, a higher percentage of heavy vehicles, higher speed profiles, and lower traffic volumes. For these reasons countermeasures needed to be focussed more on mass action treatments rather than precise treatments at specific locations. The mass action treatments will be centred on minor road junction upgrades, addressing horizontal curve deficiencies, and clear zone treatments, together with safety works at major junctions. The review also highlighted the need to better separate opposing streams of traffic. To address this issue an innovative wide centre-line trail is planned on parts of the Newell Highway, which will not only separate opposing vehicles but also allow overtaking opportunities on appropriate lengths of road. This paper illustrates how the safety review process for the Newell Highway was implemented and how it was adjusted from the previous two reviews to suit the different profile of the Newell Highway.