Case study
Taking charge of distracted driving


Downloads
Safety Policy
Contractor OHS Requirements Policy


GRI G4 Indicators

  • Customer Health and Safety DMA
  • Occupational Health and Safety DMA
  • LA6
  • PR2

Safety for all

Safety is Transurban’s highest priority. Our success in delivering safer road networks has a significant impact on our customers.

In recent years we have continued to make operational improvements to enhance safety on our roads such as electronic speed and lane control, specialist tunnel safety systems and automatic detection of incidents to ensure a rapid response.

In FY14, we took our commitment to road safety a step further with the adoption of a new corporate key performance indicator (KPI). We are aiming to achieve a 15 per cent reduction in injury and fatality crashes over a five year period to 2019, which is consistent with state and federal road safety strategies. Our current average injury crash rate1  is 5.16 per 100 million vehicle kilometres travelled, which is 70 per cent below the broader network average. We will use our current injury crash rate as the baseline to measure our progress.

To help achieve our KPI we have developed:

  • a company-wide Customer and Roadways Safety Policy
  • an ‘evidence-based’ Road Safety Strategy and Action Plan based on the National Road Safety Strategy 2011 - 2020 Safe Systems principles, and
  • a balanced set of initiatives across our organisation that reflects the goals of the Customer and Roadways Safety Policy and the recommendations of the Strategy and Action Plan, and
  • a centralised Health, Safety, Environment and Quality (HSEQ) team with the capacity to adapt to our growth in existing and new markets.

This year we are also changing the way we report on customer safety to align with the National and State Road Safety Strategies. Previously we presented a Collision Index, which was a rolling average of collisions on each asset. From now on we will be reporting the average injury crash rate and benchmarking our performance against statistics from the broader road network. The injury crash rate is an alternative method for measuring road safety as it represents the rate of injury instead of just collisions which may not necessarily lead to injuries.

1The calculation for the TCL combined trend is: average injury crashes across Transurban assets per month / average Vehicle Kilometres travelled across Transurban assets per month X 100,000,000, then averaged over a six month period (based on CityLink, M2, ED, LCT, M5 and M7). Road safety data for the 495 Express Lanes has not been included in the road safety figures for FY14. We have only recently received full road safety data for the past 5 years from authorities and are in the midst of analysing the data. We intend to report on road safety on the 495 Express Lanes in FY15.

Customer Safety Data

There were two fatal crashes on our operating assets during FY14. On 23 November 2013, a driver died in a head-on crash on the M5 in Sydney. The crash occurred at 3.35am when the driver’s vehicle, travelling in the wrong direction, crashed into an oncoming vehicle. On May 6 2014 at 3.45pm a driver died after a crash near the entrance to the 495 Express Lanes at Springfield, Virginia. The driver’s vehicle stopped abruptly and the vehicle was hit from behind.

In FY14, there were 127 injury crashes on Transurban’s roads. Most of these crashes occurred on CityLink in Melbourne, and the M5 and Westlink M7 in Sydney, which together represented 87 per cent of all injury crashes recorded. The most frequent injury crashes occurring on these networks involve merging and rear end crashes where drivers have to make a decision or there is an abrupt change in speed. Loss of control resulting in hitting another object or vehicle is the next most common type of injury crash. These types of crashes typically result in an injury because of inappropriate speed.

Employee Safety

We have continued our work on building our safety culture among our employees and contractors.

In FY14, we introduced a safety leadership program, designed to equip Transurban leaders, operational and project staff along with our key contracting partners, with the skills and confidence to transform safety in our business. A key focus of the program is developing effective safety leaders at all levels who can encourage and support our people to think, behave and operate in a safe way.

The program covers areas such as:

  • Safety culture
  • Due diligence
  • Risk management
  • Conversations and observations, and
  • The role of the leader.

Regular safety compliance training is already compulsory for our employees, and all new employees are required to attend a full corporate induction program covering safety and other issues. We have maintained our focus on redesigning some activities associated with repetitive movements at work stations and continue to promote exercise and core strength programs to ensure employees remain fit for work.  

To further improve our management of contractors, we will focus on building stronger partnerships and work to accurately and consistently measure Health Safety and Environment performance across our contractors.

Our Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate has continued to decline among Australian employees while our Recordable Injury Frequency Rate (RIFR), which includes LTIFR and restricted work and medical treatments, rose slightly from last year. In FY14, we embarked on a project to develop a more robust data collection system for safety data. This year the figure for Australia only represents Transurban employees in Australia historic figures included direct contractors. In FY15 we will be able to accurately calculate the RIFR for employees and contractors.