Current initiatives

Rumble strips and route guidance

Driving is a full-time task in which we need to respect all other road users, especially pedestrians and cyclists. However, people sometimes make mistakes, especially when they're tired – such as allowing their vehicles to drift to the left or right of the road, and therefore putting themselves and other road users at risk.

To help prevent accidents happening, we've installed 'rumble strips' along state highway edge-lines and centre-lines to warn drivers and give them the opportunity to correct the situation before it becomes more dangerous. We take care to install rumble strips in places where they won't affect cyclists or where the noise they generate won't disturb nearby residents.

Learn more about our plans to extend rumble strips to a greater number of highways.

School safety zones and electronic signs

As part of our work in protecting the safety of children using roads and footpaths, special zones and signs can now be installed near schools with particular safety issues.

These include:

• in urban areas, introduction of short 40km/h speed zones (note that local bylaws are required for these)
• in isolated rural areas, electronic 'children' warning signs, activated for a short period before and after school (to replace the usual fixed signs)
• signs that measure vehicles' speed and provide feedback to drivers on that speed
• intelligent electronic warning signs, which alert drivers to other hazardous situations that require their attention – for example, signs triggered by electronic detectors that warn of hidden queues ahead
• curve warning signs, which detect the speed of approaching vehicles and flash an alert if the speed is above the safe level for that particular curve. Their use is reserved for rare situations where all the usual techniques have been tried but the difficulty of the curve means that crashes are still happening.

Learn about what we're doing to make state highways safer for all road users by:

• creating forgiving roadsides that reduce the likelihood of death and serious injury should a crash occur
• creating readable roads that help prevent road crashes by eliminating 'surprises'.