The University of the Sunshine Coast will spend almost $1 million on research for safer working and driving practices.

USC’s Professor Paul Salmon and Dr Natassia Goode are leading a project that has been granted $497,600 to assess how reporting systems can be used to reduce workplace injury.

The study could reduce the rate of incidents, which currently affect more than 600,000 Australian workers a year at a cost of about $60 billion.

“We intend to develop, implement and test a process for translating incident reporting system outputs into appropriate and effective injury countermeasures, and then evaluate the safety effects of adopting the new incident reporting and learning cycle,” Dr Salmon said.

A further $438,000 has gone to a research project led by USC’s Dr Bridie Scott-Parker, which aims to develop a best-practice model to enable professional instructors to teach higher-order skills, such as hazard perception, to young learner drivers.

“Australian young drivers aged 17-25 comprise 13 percent of the population but 22 percent of road deaths,” she said.

“More effective teaching models are expected to reduce young drivers’ crash risk when they drive unsupervised.”

Dr Scott-Parker will work with researchers at Transport and Road Safety Research at the University of NSW, CARRS-Q at QUT, the United States National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Queensland’s Department of Transport and Main Roads, RACQ, Australian Driver Trainers Association Queensland, Easyas Driver Training Australia and Rightway Driving.