Friday, 30 October 2026
The Austroads team delivering the Australian Road Assessment Program (AusRAP) has won the Australasian College of Road Safety Excellence in Road Safety Award for its work to make road safety data more accessible and useful for governments, road managers and the community.
AusRAP is a nationally coordinated program that assesses the built-in safety of roads using the internationally recognised iRAP methodology. Austroads coordinates the program, working with state and territory road agencies to provide a consistent picture of infrastructure-related road safety risk across Australia.
At the centre of AusRAP is the National AusRAP Dashboard, the world’s first interactive star rating dashboard. It brings together road star ratings, crash history and traffic volumes in a single national view, helping governments target road safety investment and upgrades where they have the greatest potential to save lives and reduce serious injuries.
The current program focuses on Australia’s major arterial roads, which carry more than 80 per cent of travel. Roads are rated from one to five stars according to their built-in safety, with trained assessors evaluating more than 50 road attributes every 100 metres. Each additional star roughly halves the risk of death or serious injury.
Paul Davies, Austroads General Manager Research, Guidance and Practice, said the award was well-deserved recognition of the AusRAP team and the significant work behind the national program.
“This award is a tremendous recognition of the AusRAP team and what they have achieved. They have created a powerful tool that helps us better understand risk and direct investment where it can make the greatest difference.
“AusRAP is built on strong collaboration with our state and territory road agencies. Their expertise, data and commitment have made this work possible, and this award is something the whole AusRAP community can be proud of.”
National Program Lead, AusRAP, Keith Simmons said AusRAP builds on the extensive road safety work undertaken by road agencies around the country.
“We are humbled to have our AusRAP coordination and acceleration program recognised by our road safety peers through the Excellence in Road Safety Award.
This award recognises those within our state and territory road authorities, our Austroads members, whose ongoing AusRAP work has made our results dashboard possible. National coordination of their work has allowed us to publish their results in a consistent, easy-to-use and easy-to-understand format.
Road safety is a shared responsibility, and AusRAP helps a wide range of people play their part by understanding where the safety risks are across our road network. If we can’t measure it, we can’t manage it, and AusRAP helps us prioritise the work that can make roads safer and save the most lives soonest.”
National Technical Lead, AusRAP, Alan Rushworth said receiving the award was an important moment for the many people who had helped build AusRAP over several years.
“It was an honour for Keith and me to accept this award on behalf of the many people across our member agencies who have been working towards this moment for several years.
There is still much more to be done to achieve our 2030 road safety targets and keep Australia moving towards zero deaths and serious injuries on our roads by 2050. This gives us a strong foundation to continue that work.”
The National AusRAP Dashboard helps track Australia’s progress towards its 2030 road safety targets. Future phases are expected to expand the dashboard’s coverage, depth and accessibility, including additional jurisdictional data, crash history mapping and star ratings for vulnerable road users.
Photo (L to R): Keith Simmons, AusRAP National Program Lead, and Alan Rushworth, AusRAP National Technical Lead.