Road rage: Why we need to fix our country roads

Vicky McGrath’s family has lived with the devastating consequences of sub-standard rural roads for almost three years. The loss of precious life is the most urgent reason to fix our worst roads, but there are other impacts that can not be ignored as well.

Thirty-seven lives.

That’s how many were lost on Wide Bay Burnett roads in 2022.

These are the roads at the centre of continued and repeated complaints across the region, which stretches from Gympie through the Fraser Coast up to Bundaberg, out west to Eidsvold and down to Nanango.

The latter, by the way, was a joint loser for the unwanted crown of highest fatalities in 2022.

Data sourced from the Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics and provided by the RACQ revealed that 15 people lost their lives on the Nanango state electorate’s roads in 2022.

It tied with the Cook state electorate, which runs from Port Douglas to the northernmost tip of the country – the very definition of regional roads.

News Corps’ mastheads across the Wide Bay Burnett, including The Gympie Times, the Fraser Coast Chronicle, the Bundaberg NewsMail, the South Burnett Times, and the Central and North Burnett Times, are campaigning for regional roads to be improved.

Then we get to crashes from which people walk, or are stretchered, away.

That figure is higher by several orders of magnitude, and the damage – emotionally and financially – is measured in years as well as dollars.

Now we are saying no more; the residents of these regions deserve better.

In the next fortnight we will be laying bare the shocking cost of our region’s shoddy roads because it is time for more to be done.

The memorial placed at the spot where Vicky McGrath died in a car crash in 2020.

The numbers are disturbing.

They become heartbreaking when you remember they are not pieces of data- they are people and their families.

Families like Vicky McGrath’s, left devastated by her death on Beelbi Creek Rd in 2020 after her car left the road and struck a tree.

Vicky’s mother Sandra said sealing the road where her daughter died would mean the tragedy was not in vain.

Vote to name Goomeri's giant pothole

“Vicky wouldn’t have died if she had been on a sealed road,” Ms McGrath said.

“She stood no chance, she really didn’t stand a chance on that road.”

The McGrath’s heart-rending story, which will be laid bare on Wednesday, is but one piece of the horrifying toll being revealed in the coming days.

Because the carnage is not stopping.

Since 2023 started, a 44-year-old Maryborough mother and a 52-year-old Gympie man died in a truck crash at the Curra Estate Road; a road mentioned more than once in interviews for the upcoming series.

Sandra McGrath with the memorial for her daughter Vicky, set up in her Bidwill home, following her daughter’s death which Ms McGrath said would not have happened if the road had been sealed.

Less than two weeks later, 14-year-old Levi Hanna was left fighting for his life in a critical condition after being struck by a car while crossing Tin Can Bay Road at Canina, northeast of Gympie.

His family made the heartbreaking decision to switch his life support off on Saturday night.

Only days before that a 66-year-old Tiaro man was killed when his motorbike crashed off the isolated Tallegalla Rd, east of Bauple and Tiaro.

Because 37 is not the final figure.

It sits on top of hundreds of lives already lost on Wide Bay Burnett roads over the decades, and thousands who were left with lifelong scars.

And it needs to end.

It needs to end so no more families have to go through the heartbreak the McGraths have experienced: the loss of their “one in a million daughter”.