Peter Mackenzie An Open Letter on Transport Deaths & Injuries Related to the proposed pulp mill

If the mill is approved, a question we will be able to answer eventually is being able to compare the number of mill-related transport deaths and injuries to the profit made over a given period, thus calculating how many lives were sacrificed per dollar of profit. One report mentions $3.7 Billion of mill profit being injected into the Tasmanian economy by 2035. My estimates are that we could be facing as many as 75 mill-related transport deaths plus 750 major injuries and lifetime disabilities, over the same time period. Estimates of monetary value for a human life vary, but if we consider $5 million per death, and average $500,000 per major injury, that’s $750 million, plus at least $20m for minor injury and property damage, for a total $770 million.

I AM submitting this open letter with concerns about transport safety issues relating to the proposed Gunn’s Pulp Mill at Bell Bay. My transport research of more than thirty years, covers transport history, safety, access, equity and future transport. Various submissions of mine have been accepted and supported by peak bodies for transport and for seniors, and I have presented a transport safety paper to a national injury prevention conference. Other safety research information has been accepted for reports, and/or acted upon by various transport authorities.

I am not affiliated with any political party or environmental group or other activism association, and while I have other concerns in regard to the proposed mill, am not able to comment with any expert knowledge on those.

If this proposed mill is built, how many transport-related deaths and injuries do we have to accept as a trade-off for profit and “social benefits”. How many mums and dads, children, older citizens, and indeed how many mill-related truck drivers will die or sustain injuries over the lifetime of the mill? These are fundamental questions that the public have a right to be answered now by every decision maker who will decide whether the mill goes ahead or not. And deaths and injuries will be inevitable if the mill is built.

If the mill is approved, a question we will be able to answer eventually is being able to compare the number of mill-related transport deaths and injuries to the profit made over a given period, thus calculating how many lives were sacrificed per dollar of profit. One report mentions $3.7 Billion of mill profit being injected into the Tasmanian economy by 2035. My estimates are that we could be facing as many as 75 mill-related transport deaths plus 750 major injuries and lifetime disabilities, over the same time period. Estimates of monetary value for a human life vary, but if we consider $5 million per death, and average $500,000 per major injury, that’s $750 million, plus at least $20m for minor injury and property damage, for a total $770 million.

As a straight accounting exercise, it would mean deducting the $770 from the $3.7 billion, leaving $2.93 billion, still a hefty amount injected into the Tasmanian community. But would that be worth the destruction of 75 lives, massive grief to ten times that many loved ones, not to mention lifetime quadriplegia, paraplegia, limb amputation or brain damage for hundreds of Tasmanians, and the stresses of being a carer added to the lives of many Tasmanians. In addition, there would be very large demands on the resources of Tasmania Police, ambulance, fire services, hospital and health system, and community services. All of this together, would certainly seriously diminish the claimed financial and social/ community benefits to be gained.

We already know that no matter how regrettable they may be considered, deaths and major injury in forest work are an accepted part of the industry, as a trade-off for profit and jobs. The same situation exists in the trucking industry. The major difference with the mill situation is that the majority of deaths and injuries will occur to ordinary community members who have neither profits or jobs to make from the mill, and no say in the approval process for the mill.

Yet, “One more road death is too many”, is an aphorism proclaimed by many Australian politicians over past decades. Does that mean these and similar concerns about road deaths and injuries are hollow words when it relates to Tasmanians, that one more death is considered a reasonable trade-off as long as enough profit is made?. Similarly the media release from Premier Lennon, “Tasmanians stand to gain major economic and social benefits from the Gunns pulp mill proposal” – makes no comment on the deaths and injuries that will occur. Are they not important enough to comment on?.

Documents submitted by Gunns, prepared by GHD, also seem to have a very simplistic view of the complex situation that is road use and road safety. Already in Tasmania, we have an ageing population, an aged, often unsafe car fleet and many roads that don’t meet the safety needs of these road users, particularly in combination with existing truck use, and predictions of significant growth in road freight transport even without the addition of pulp mill traffic. This confluence of changes will heighten over the next decade to around the year 2020. The life of this pulp mill will extend well beyond that time, so deaths and injuries will continue to 2035 and beyond.

This is already an untenable situation, yet the proposed mill will feed significant additional numbers of trucks into this situation. Regarding possible rail haulage, already we have seen Pacific National recently pull out of certain rail haulage, and there is no guarantee that it will not in time pull out of Tasmania altogether. Wishful thinking does not replace commercially-based decisions in these situations.

What we can be sure of, if the mill is approved is that there will be transport-related deaths, involving truck transport and commuting workers both related to the mill, and this doesn’t give the full picture.

It is well researched that despite the deaths and injuries in road use, there are much, much higher volumes of life-threatening near-misses, often by centimetres or fractions of a second, with violent braking, and swerving, vehicles running off road being the difference between near- miss and disaster. Despite this strange form of Roulette with life and limb, Australians have difficulty in facing the reality that they or loved ones can be both causer and/or victim of road crashes. We prefer to think that it will happen to some other “errant” driver or anti-social person. I respectfully suggest that all the decision-makers involved with the pulp mill approval process might gain by checking their perception in this regard with police, insurers, Monash University’s Accident Research Centre, and perhaps more importantly University of Michigan Traffic Research Institute (UMTRI).

In the past, when there has been criticism of truck-car related deaths, spokesmen for the industry have attempted to divert attention from the industry, by focusing on other road users as being “at-fault”. Pointing attention at who is “At-Fault” may be useful for legal issues, but is a poor substitute for identifying causal/contributing factors and implementing proper preventative measures. The World Health Organization has stated that one of the key measures to reduce traffic accidents and the adverse results is by reduction of risk exposure, through reduction of motor vehicle usage, and certainly not significant increases in truck haulage as will happen if this planned mill proceeds.

It also needs to be mentioned that for many car drivers, particularly older people, the single most frightening non-crash situation is being tailgated by large trucks (or buses). While the government has poor statistics on these events, my research has shown that they happen far too often. With more trucks mixing with other traffic, trying to meet schedules, and a growing number of older road users involved, on inadequate roads, there will be, by deduction, increases with this high risk activity in the years ahead, and possibly related crashes. Due to the dispersal of the problem, coupled to the reluctance and difficulty of one drivers claiming against the behaviour of another, there is no effective intervention for this issue.

Yet most of these aspects are either not addressed, or almost glossed over in the approval process for the mill, and certainly not addressed adequately. While rail haulage is safer than road, there is an over-simplified supposition that rail will somehow be used for the majority of the haulage of forest products to the mill, rather than road, and this will take care of the safety issues. Firstly, this is incorrect in that, by necessity, road transport will have to be used for a significant percentage of the transport task.

Additionally, in regard to that part of the task where rail could be used, Gunns is quoted as “preferring” to use rail over road, but this is another commercial decision, and there is no guarantee by any means that Gunns will ultimately choose rail over road. Similarly, there is nothing in statements from the Tasmanian Government that indicates that it will compel Gunns to use rail over road for any part of the transport task, or that it has even considered making rail freight haulage compulsory. Forcing the use of rail haulage could face legal challenge based on constitutional issues, and would most probably be challenged by the Australian Government.

When understanding perceptions and attitudes towards road safety, it is worth remembering that a previous Federal Labor Government effectively forced the use of B-Doubles onto Tasmanian roads, with the then Transport Minister Brown claiming there would only ever be half-a-dozen units in use, and most amazingly asserting that a car spending 11 seconds overtaking a B-Double on the wrong side of the road, instead of ten for a standard semi-trailer, somehow did not increase risk!

Remember too, that the modal split between road and rail in Australia is decided by competition policy and commercial imperatives, not based on “externalities” that include death and injury, emissions levels, and imported fuel costs.

Around ten years ago, facilitated by the NSW Department of State Development, I met with the project team for the then under construction Visy Pulp Mill at Tumut NSW, to discuss transport safety and their modal choice for transport of finished product from the mill to interstate destinations, as well as certain inbound needs for the mill. (Forest products to the mill by necessity, use road transport).

Yes, their stated preference was to use rail transport, but it would have necessitated re-opening of a closed rail link. Their bottom line, “We will use whatever transport mode gives us the best price” remains salient ten years later. Corporate commercial priorities combined with reluctance to commit funding by the state government, keeps the rail link closed, and 400,000 tonnes of road freight still heads off annually onto unsuitable local roads, and via interstate corridors and though major cities. The Federal Governments said the rail link was not their responsibility, though rather curiously, they committed funding to upgrade various roads to the mill under the Roads of National Importance Program (RONI).

How many deaths or injuries have resulted from transport involved with that mill is a question I don’t have an answer to, and I doubt there has been a study since the mill opened. A death or injury from a truck hauling finished mill product and a car in Sydney for example, would be investigated by police as a stand-alone incident, and not grouped with crashes anywhere else involving freight from Tumut mill. This is what will happen in Tasmania.

As an example of the transport infrastructure funding questions about the mill, West Tamar Council, put forward its support for the mill proposal, but then stated it wanted extra funding for state roads within its boundaries because of expected additional mill related traffic. Yet this is despite council knowing of the many, many years they lacked success in their demands for funding for safety related upgrading of the West Tamar Highway. This is similar for other municipalities, with advice from the State Government that all upgrade money is already allocated for several years ahead. At the same time, the state Government is demanding money from the Australian Government for “southern roads” saying they have been neglected. If additional money is directed towards upgrades of roads for mill traffic (and it needs to be), then by deduction, it will mean even longer delays for other existing road upgrading and even maintenance needs.

Similarly, the direction of funds to re-open the Wiltshire-Burnie rail link will necessitate money coming from some budget. State, Federal?. Money that is allocated to either road or rail related to the mill, will mean less money for some other vital need, possibly education, hospitals or other vital infrastructure. What is certain is that additional delays on road needs, especially safety upgrades or maintenance, due to money being channeled to meet mill transport needs, will result in additional deaths and injuries, indirectly caused by the approval of the mill.

Gunn’s (GHD) report talks about possibly very low death figures due to mill-related truck transport. This might assuage any concerns of mill proposal decision makers, but these are very average best-case figures that could change dramatically with one crash between a truck and a carload of people. The real possibility of just one crash between a truck and school or other bus
Is almost too much to contemplate, but must be mentioned.

I welcome any questions or request for supporting references for the information in this letter,

Yours sincerely

Peter Mackenzie

Peter lives within commuting distance of Launceston, has been a lifelong transport historian, has worked co-operatively on transport research with transport planners, consulting engineers, driver trainers and other transport-related professionals.