Pedalling her commitment to road safety

As a commuter cyclist, Professor Narelle Haworth has been on the end of vile verbal abuse, had a water bottle pegged at her, and been knocked by a car at low speed.

She knows to be wary of garbage trucks and blind spots in their vision; she follows the safest route on her commute, not necessarily the most direct one.

She has had her fair share of skin scrapped off, though, thankfully, no more serious injuries than that.

Travelling six kilometres to and from work each day to QUT’s Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety – Queensland (CARRS-Q), Professor Haworth knows firsthand the many safety issues facing cyclists.

It has also given her a unique perspective into her job as a road safety researcher of more than 30 years’ experience, with a focus on vulnerable road users – pedestrians, bicyclists, motorcyclists, and now e-scooters.

“I know what it’s like on the roads and why some cyclists can get quite angry when drivers do the wrong thing,’’ Professor Haworth said.

“Your heart rate goes up, your life is in danger. And you can respond inappropriately if you’re not careful.

“And it is certainly easier to be interested in a topic if it’s something that affects you as well. If you don’t care about something, why would you work in it for so many years?’’

Professor Haworth, a former director of CARRS-Q, has been with the centre, which is based at the university’s Kelvin Grove campus, since 2006. She began her academic career in the psychology department of Monash University in Melbourne, completing her PhD and working for 18 years as a research and senior research fellow at the Monash University Accident Research Centre.

She didn’t learn to ride a bicycle until she was 15 years old due to her balance being affected from problems with her left ear as a child. She embraced commuting by bike about 14 years ago, when CARRS-Q moved to its Kelvin Grove location from Carseldine, in Brisbane’s north, coinciding with a stage of her life “where you don’t have to be transporting children around anymore’’.

She concedes she falls into a small genre of commuters – the “very rare breed of older women who ride to work’’.

Plain speaking and a dogged campaigner, Professor Haworth says a traditional focus on the annual road toll is misguided and revealed only the “tip of the iceberg’’.

The impact of serious injuries from road trauma, she says, is a far greater cost to the community with the total social cost of road trauma about $30 billion each year. Fatal crashes account for about $4 billion of that.

“Fatalities hide the true magnitude of road trauma,’’ Professor Haworth said.

“While every death is tragic, about 30 people are hospitalised for every person killed and the human and economic impact of serious injury is greater and more widespread than that of fatalities.

“That’s why I have dedicated my career to reducing trauma on our roads.”

CARRS-Q was established in 1996 as a joint initiative of QUT and the Motor Accident Insurance Commission (MAIC) and is unique from other university road safety research organisations in that it straddles research, education and advocacy.

While falling under QUT’s Faculty of Health, CARRS-Q has succeeded, Professor Haworth says, because it takes in a range of disciplines that are needed to address road safety.

“Road safety is not a job for psychology, neither is it a job for engineering or for medicine or for statistics,’’ she said.

“It’s a real-world problem that needs a range of people from a range of disciplines who are committed to solving the problem.’’

In 2015, her husband, Andrew, fell from his bike and landed on his head, spending a month in hospital suffering concussion as well as a broken vertebra, jaw and finger. Professor Haworth is still emotional when recalling the trauma of that time.

“My husband almost died. His helmet saved him,’’ she said.

“He came off his bike on a very nice bicycle path. He just lost control and landed on his head on the concrete.

“If he hadn't been wearing the helmet, he'd be gone.

“It's not why I do what I do, but it makes it personal. It's something that reminds me of why I do it and why it's important to keep going.’’

Looking ahead, Australian governments have committed to zero deaths and serious injuries on our roads by 2050.

Professor Haworth says the target is achievable, but much work needs to be done including reducing default speed limits on rural roads from 100km/h to 80km/h or lower, and in urban areas from 50km/h to as low as 30km/h.

“Australia used to be a leader in road safety internationally,’’ she said.

“We are now number 20 in road safety performance. We get pleased when we bring limits down from 60 km/h to 50 km/h but, in most parts of the world where there are lots of pedestrians and cyclists, it’s 30 km/h. And we know at that level we can get it (fatalities and serious injuries) down to zero.’’

At a personal level, Professor Haworth has considered retirement but admits “not many people believe it’’.

In the meantime, she invests time in her students and “training the next generation’’ and making sure they learn to effectively communicate research findings to the people who can make change.

“Because it’s a waste of time doing research if nobody knows about it, and I’m not going to waste my time,’’ Professor Haworth said.

While retirement may not be on the cards just yet, she is also conscious of timing her exit while she is still physically able to accomplish various long-distance EuroVelo cycling routes.

Haworth has already ridden from the source of the Rhine in Switzerland to the North Sea near Rotterdam, in the Netherlands; and from the source of the Danube River in the Black Forest, Germany, to Budapest, Hungary. But there are plenty of others on the to-do list, as well as some nice routes in New Zealand, that she would love to complete.

“I’ve been a long time in road safety and the reason I do it is I want to make a difference. People matter and lives matter,’’ she said.

“I’ve still got more to do but I also know there are many EuroVelo routes yet to ride.’’