A surge in road deaths across Australia has prompted police and safety experts to issue urgent warnings about dangerous driving, with enforcement efforts ramping up in response to what some are calling a national crisis.
In Brisbane’s south alone, 15 lives have already been lost on the roads this year — six more than at the same time in 2023. Statewide, last year was the worst in 15 years for road trauma. Now, with a worrying rise in extreme speeding and drink driving, Queensland Police are doubling down.
South Brisbane District Bayside Acting Superintendent Stewart Day urged all road users to reflect on their responsibilities. “Every road user — drivers, riders, passengers, and pedestrians — must commit to making safer choices to keep our roads in Brisbane’s south safe,” he said this week.
“Every life lost on our roads leaves a family and a community reeling with their loss. We have seen a devastating toll for the first half of 2025, and we do not want this trend to continue.”
Queensland Police have launched targeted blitzes across high-risk areas, with a zero-tolerance approach to the “fatal five” — speeding, fatigue, distraction, not wearing seatbelts, and driving under the influence.
In May alone, officers recorded multiple extreme speeding incidents in Brisbane’s south, including a motorcyclist allegedly clocked at 191km/h on the Pacific Motorway, and a yellow Porsche pulled over for allegedly going 168km/h in a 90 zone. One driver was arrested for allegedly recording a blood alcohol content of 0.364 — more than seven times the legal limit.
“Asking people to drive safely and follow the law is not a new message,” Day said. “Yet we continuously see people disregarding it and putting themselves and other road users at risk.”
The 56-year-old male Porsche driver was issued with fine of $1,854. Source: Queensland Police
National death toll continues to climb
The situation in Queensland reflects a larger, alarming trend. Last year, 1,300 people died on Australian roads — the highest toll since 2012. It’s part of a four-year rise in deaths not seen since before seatbelts became mandatory in the 1960s. The final three months of 2024 alone saw 359 lives lost — the deadliest quarter in more than a decade.
Road safety advocate Peter Frazer OAM, whose daughter was killed by a distracted driver, said the problem goes beyond driver error — it’s cultural. “The very first thing that we need to do is to flip everything on its head and start dealing with the reality of risk on our roads,” he told Yahoo News Australia. “We’ve got to have our governments start doing much more active enforcement, both police enforcement and also automated enforcement, which we can do immediately.”
Frazer said many states still lack essential measures such as average speed cameras for all vehicles, despite years of advocacy. “We need to go back to the concept of ‘anywhere, anytime’ in terms of compliance and enforcement.”
Experts say rising population doesn’t explain the full picture
Some argue the rising death toll is simply a reflection of a growing population. But Dr Ingrid Johnston, CEO of the Australasian College of Road Safety, said this oversimplifies the issue.
“If road deaths were purely a result of population growth, the rate of deaths per 100,000 people would remain steady,” she explained. Johnston said governments must act decisively, pointing to the failure of Australia’s 10-year plan to halve deaths by 2030 — launched in 2021 — as a sign the current approach is falling short. Frazer agrees.
“Since Covid, there’s been a noticeable increase in dangerous and erratic driving across Australia,” he said. “We’ve got the vaccines to stop it — we just need the will.”
With the annual cost of road trauma now estimated at $30 billion, the human and economic toll continues to grow — and with it, calls for a new approach to safety, enforcement, and accountability behind the wheel.
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