The changes include making people caught mid-range drink driving blow into a breathalyser to prove they are fit to drive before they can even activate their cars.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Roads Minister Melinda Pavey’s Road Safety Plan 2021 is extremely ambitious and only time will tell if it’s likely to prove successful.

Along with a short-term target of reducing the state’s road toll by 30 per cent by 2021, the plan also nominates 2056 as the year we want to see a zero road toll in NSW.

In their defence, the premier and minister can point to the use of the word “aspirational” in the plan as indicating it might be more a dream than a policy.

But, what a beautiful dream it would be.

For its part, the NSW government is committing big money to improving the quality of the state’s roads and it is introducing tough new rules to make drivers who do the wrong thing pay a higher price for their mistakes.

The ignominy of having an interlock device installed on the car of every motorist convicted of a mid-range PCA [or higher] should serve as an extra deterrent.

Using the state’s speed camera network to catch people on their mobile phone will also be effective.

But, history shows no deterrent works in all cases.

In the end, bad driving behaviours come down to individual choices.

There will always be drivers who take the wrong option.

The three chief killers on our roads remain drivers who are fatigued, drivers who are affected by alcohol or drugs, and, above all, drivers who are speeding.

Road safety boffins and the police can do only so much to combat such idiotic, high-risk behaviour.

But a big-money splash such as that announced by the state government will at least get people talking, and thinking.

And that must be a step in the right direction.

Zero might be an impossible dream, but it has to be the target.

Zero is the only target that admits that every life lost on our roads is one life too many.