RACQ calls for urgent action to reverse rising road toll

In 2024, the State recorded a 15-year high road toll with 303 people killed.

As at 20 March this year, 47 lives had already been lost on Queensland roads and that number was expected to increase over the busy Easter period when more people were travelling.

General Manager of Advocacy Joshua Cooney said urgent action was needed to save lives and deliver an immediate change to road safety culture.

“It’s been a horrific start to 2025. Queenslanders’ attitudes towards road safety seem to be getting worse, extreme driving is increasing and more people are choosing to deliberately break the road rules,” Mr Cooney said.

“Before Covid, road fatalities were trending down and if we remained on that path, fatalities would be tracking below 200 per year.

“At the current rate, we are heading towards another unacceptably high number of road crash fatalities in 2025 of around 300 deaths.”

Transport and Main Roads data showed that since 2018 there had been a significant increase in deaths involving speeding and drink and drug driving.

In 2023, speed was a factor in 89 deaths (32% of road fatalities) – that’s 21 more deaths than the five-year average between 2018 and 2022.

Drink and drug driving played a role in 110 deaths, almost 40% of the total lives lost.

Mr Cooney said the State Government must focus on improving law and order on the roads through deterrents, enforcement, and improving driver behaviour.

“This is not about increasing fines, clearly that hasn’t worked, it’s about rethinking how we ensure motorists who choose to break the road rules are held accountable,” Mr Cooney said.

“Drivers need to feel they will get caught if they decide to do the wrong thing, and that the consequences for breaking road rules are significant.

“The choice to deliberately break road rules and drive illegally is killing and seriously injuring too many people in Queensland.”

RACQ’s road safety reforms focus on three key areas:

1. Greater detection:

• Significantly increasing random roadside tests, particularly saliva drug tests
• Mandatory roadside drug tests after crashes
• Increasing highly visible on-road police
• Increasing point-to-point speed cameras in high-crash zones.
  
  2. Greater consequences:

• Cracking down on the State’s most dangerous drivers: targeting speeding, and drink and drug driving
• Expanding impoundment sanctions or immobilisation for serious or multiple offences
• Increasing individual accountability for cars registered to a business.

  3. Education & Security:

• Licence reform for motorcycle riders, with a focus on demonstrated rider proficiency
• Increased community road safety education programs
• A new system for rating car security.

The Club is engaging with the State Government to advocate for these reforms to reduce Queensland’s alarming road toll and make the roads safer.

Table 1. Queensland road fatalities by characteristic

Table 2. Queensland road fatalities for the last 10 years