As a reality check, it would have been worthwhile to require a representative sample of public servants contributing to the mandating of life-saving new technology in heavy vehicles to sit in on a Canberra coronial inquest this week.
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The inquest was into an awful, stomach-churning incident which occurred on the Monaro Highway in mid-2018.
The Corney family's Ford Territory was stopped at a set of traffic lights when a seven-tonne medium rigid tipper truck, operated by a well-known Canberra landscape supplies company, ploughed into the back of their vehicle at an estimated 70km/h.
Four-year-old Blake Corney had been in the back of the vehicle, singing along to his favourite music.
Blake died instantly of a massive head trauma.
All who attended on that fateful day, including emergency services workers, were distressed and badly affected by the incident. So terribly confronting were the photos and crash investigation details from the incident, they have been sealed.
ACT Chief Coroner Lorraine Walker has nine significant submissions from various stakeholders to assess before she hands down her preliminary findings in August.
Already identified is that the driver of that vehicle should never have been behind the wheel in the first place, knowing he suffered from a chronic medical condition. Akis Emmanouel Livas is serving time in Canberra's jail for culpable driving causing death.
But equally, the incident has directed a focus on heavy-vehicle safety and the fact that right across the country there are tens of thousands of trucks and buses driving our roads - taking our kids to school, and delivering goods and services - which could easily be equipped with the most rudimentary of driver distraction detection and warning devices.
The average heavy rigid vehicle driving our national roads is nearly 16 years old, five years and more than our light vehicles.
The economics of this are easy to understand. Diesel-powered trucks and buses are engineering for long life, hundreds of thousands of kilometres.
This long-life engine and chassis engineering costs money, and the vehicles are priced accordingly.
In order to amortise that high purchase price, owners - even governments - hold onto them much longer. Some of the Renault buses on the ACT Action fleet are 35 years old.
So sharing the road with your family car are vehicles weighing up to 35 tonnes or more which were designed back in the 70s and 80s still doing great service, as they did all those decades ago.
But just as light vehicle safety has moved ahead in leaps and bounds so too, has truck safety. The latest generation heavy vehicles are (almost) as equally matched with common car technology like anti-lock brakes, autonomous emergency braking and stability control.
However, to retrofit most older trucks with such devices would be impractical and send thousands of owner operators out of business.
But what is possible is to mandate warning devices. These devices use sensors and commonly available technology to warn drivers of an impending frontal collision, and most also have the added capability of watching for fatigue, drowsiness and distraction.
Simple physics relating to mass, speed and required braking distance dictate that heavy vehicles inherently pose a greater risk to all road users, and those who drive them are required to sit for much tougher commercial-grade licences than car drivers.
But even the best heavy-vehicle drivers make mistakes. Major interstate road haulage companies like Toll and Finemores update their prime movers regularly and mandate driver distraction devices. They see it as a vital tool for workplace health and safety, as well as to rein in their huge insurance premiums.
Blake Corney's awful death demands we do better. Mandating these warning devices on all heavy vehicles should be his legacy.
