THE AUSTRALIAN ROAD RULES –
WHAT ARE THEY AND WHERE ARE THEY GOING?

Ian W Shepherd and Fiona A Calvert
National Road Transport Commission
PO Box 13105 Law Courts
MELBOURNE VIC 8010

“Motoring in Australia is daily taking on more of a national aspect by shedding its earlier parochial garb. Yet there are few fields in which legislative and regulatory inconsistency have freer play than in the Australian motoring world.

At the moment a motorist passing from one State into another has to unlearn much of what he has learned in his own State and to learn a lot that is strange to him. This produces irritation – or worse - in the motor owner and motor driver, and tends to unnecessary costs of traffic administration (which the motorist usually has to pay for). It also adds to traffic dangers through ignorance or unfamiliarity with local conditions or practices on the part of drivers.

Therefore, anything that can be done to lay down a national basis for motor traffic control must be of much practical value. Commonsense suggests that there should be uniformity instead of variety, and that the growing volume of interstate traffic requires a national instead of a local viewpoint in things common to traffic in all of the States. Were all motor vehicles kept within their own State boundaries, little disadvantage would arise from the present welter of confusing motor legislation, but when a system becomes national, a system (or lack of system) of arbitrarily fixed laws that differ substantially in matters in which there should be common agreement appears absurd, if not intolerable.

I do not consider that it would be very difficult, once the groundwork had been prepared, to induce the various State Governments to agree to a national conference of traffic authorities and representatives of the recognised motoring organisations in the