In safe hands

Issue 20 | Spring/Summer 2007

Report: Colin Vickery
Photography: Greg Ford and Melissa Di Ciero

A rider testing the MUARC simulator

The cars we drive, the roads we travel on, our attitudes to road safety. They have all been changed by the work of the Monash University Accident Research Centre, this year celebrating 20 years of success. What started as a research centre specialising in road safety has today broadened to cover a far wider range of injury prevention.

As Dr Peter Vulcan scanned the three empty offices hurriedly provided on the top floor of the Monash Art Gallery, he reminded himself that many of our greatest institutions had very humble beginnings.

It was June 29, 1987 and Australia's road toll had reached alarming figures. Dr Vulcan, originally at the Road Traffic Authority, and his colleagues at the Transport Accident Commission, were convinced that an independent, multi-disciplinary research organisation could help save lives.

The Monash University Accident Research Centre (MUARC) was born as a threeyear partnership between the Victorian Government and Monash University. Dr Vulcan had been appointed its founding director, and now he and his small team of road safety experts -- Don Howie , Alan Drummond, Brian Fildes, Narelle Haworth, Charles Ambrose and Margaret Garrard - had to prove themselves.

From the start, the Centre set its sights high. The brief was to reduce transport accident compensation costs through a reduction in accident frequency and severity; develop a centre of international reputation with an international presence; to export road safety expertise programs and expand into industrial, domestic and recreational accident research in the future. All this and become self sufficient within three years.

Twenty years later, those ambitions have been well and truly realised. MUARC, now with a staff of over 100 and an annual budget of $11.5 million, is renowned as one of the world's leading injury prevention research centres.

"I was confident we could do the job back in those early days but never in my wildest dreams did I think MUARC would be this big or successful two decades later," Dr Vulcan, now retired, said.

Professor Rod McClure

MUARC's first projects included road accident data analysis; research into the behaviour of young drivers; occupant protection (whiplash, infant and child restraints); traffic engineering (signalling, black spots), and cycling.

MUARC research helped spearhead successful road safety initiatives aimed at drink driving in late 1989 and excessive speeding in early 1990. By 1992, road fatalities in Victoria had dropped almost 50 per cent and serious injuries by more than 40 per cent. Since then, they have dropped further, with Victoria's fatality rate now amongst the lowest in the world.

MUARC has also led the way in road crash investigation with its long running Australian National Crash In-Depth Study (ANCIS); helped change vehicle design rules for frontal and side-on crashes; developed the widely-respected Used Car Safety Rating System; recommended design changes to reduce heavy vehicle injuries; contributed to a road authority's decision to seal shoulders on rural roads; and influenced several Victoria Police traffic enforcement and operational strategies.

Researchers Leo West (left) and Terry Hore discussing a study on drink driving in 1980.

It wasn't long before people realised MUARC's research methods could be adapted to other forms of injury prevention. By the time Professor Ian Johnston took over as Director in 2001, MUARC had expanded into other areas of transport safety as well as workplace and community safety.

Key contributions occurred in falls prevention in the elderly, fork lift safety, farm safety, suicide prevention among young Australians, as well as injuries from water sports and boating.

One of the seeds for this expansion came in 1988 when MUARC was awarded funding for a major project on child injury prevention.

Dr Joan Ozanne-Smith joined the team with a mission to expand the existing child injury surveillance system. Now titled the Victorian Injury Surveillance Unit, it has played a major part in identifying hazards in the home as well as product safety.

As the recent crashes in the Burnley tunnel and at the Kerang railway crossing remind us, accidents can never be eliminated -- which makes the work of the Monash University Accident Research Centre all the more important as it celebrates 20 years as a leader in the field of injury prevention.

New Director

MUARC is set to enter its third decade with a new Director, Professor Rod McClure, at the helm.
Professor Rod McClure, formerly Professor of Epidemiology and Community Care at the School of Medicine, Griffith University, believes MUARC is well placed to expand its influence internationally with major projects already underway in the US, Europe and China. "Injury is the slow-burn pandemic of the modern age," he said. "It affects all ages and gender groups in all countries of the world and comprises an ever increasing proportion of the global burden of disease. "MUARC is developing the science of injury prevention to support an international solution to this global problem."