Widow pleads for Bruce Highway safety after husband’s death in Tiaro crash
The wife of a beloved 57-year-old former air force serviceman has made a plea for calm on the state’s roads, reliving the final moments before her husband’s tragic death.
Gympie
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After two weeks working away from his Childers home, technician Steve Loveland pulled into a service station south of Tiaro on July 16 to refuel his motorcycle, grab dinner and speak with his wife of 20 years on the phone.
He told her he expected to be home between 8.30pm and 9pm, hung up and hopped back on his bike. But he never made it.
Just 30 minutes later the 57-year-old father of two was killed in a shocking crash on the Bruce Hwy at the Fraser Coast town, when a truck in the same direction collided with his motorbike just past the 60km/h zone at the town’s southern entrance.
He died at the scene and no charges have been laid over the crash.
Nearly three months since her unthinkable loss, Mrs Loveland is making an impassioned plea for drivers to take more care on the roads so no-one else has to go through the same heartbreak she and their two daughters, Peta and Maddison, have.
‘I tried to call … he didn’t answer’
Mrs Loveland said the first she was aware of the tragedy was when one of her daughters told her there had been a crash between a truck and bike.
Realising “Steve would have been there that exact moment” Mrs Loveland tried to reach him on his helmet bluetooth.
“I tried to call him … and he obviously didn’t answer,” she said.
A rural firefighter since 2002, she then started making inquiries through her own connections, all the while calling and texting him several more times “just asking him to let us know he was OK”.
There was no reply.
When 9.30pm ticked past, she called the Queensland Fire Department communications team in search of answers.
“If they could just tell me what kind of bike it was,” she said.
“That’s all I wanted to know.”
Mrs Loveland was advised no details could be provided at that time.
She called him “two or three” more times and sent several texts “telling him how worried we were and he needs to let us know he’s OK”.
It was only shortly before midnight when police arrived at the family home to confirm what “I already knew”.
“He wasn’t home, I hadn’t heard from him, he knows how much I worry about him riding on that road on the bike and if he had been stuck … he would have let me know,” she said.
“If he had gone through before the accident he would have been home.”
Heartbreaking end to 23-year love
Mrs Loveland said her husband’s death, only three days after their youngest celebrated her 18th birthday, had turned their world on its head.
“Life has changed forever, it’s not the same,” she said of the loss of a man who “always had a smile on his face, always laughing, (and was) a bit of a clown”.
The couple had first met when the former air force serviceman was posted at Wagga.
Mrs Loveland said she had moved back to Canberra to help her mother having “only just lost my stepfather to an accident”.
Soon after their fateful meeting Mr Loveland was posted to Amberley. She followed and the couple were “together ever since”.
Their relationship continued through Mr Loveland’s overseas deployments, first to the Middle East and then to the Solomon Islands, which was supposed to be only for a week “ended up being three months”.
The Lovelands each joined the Rural Fire Service in 2002, and when Mr Loveland was discharged in 2018 they moved to Childers permanently, making their home on a 121ha property.
“This was what he worked all his life to own,” Mrs Loveland said.
“He serviced all our cars, did all the maintenance around the house.
“Being a technician the house is, there’s things here I don’t even understand. Everything is wired and connected. Smoke alarms go off and I get an alert on my phone.”
His love of the property went so far he fought a bushfire which threatened to destroy the family home on October 31, 2022.
“He was here on his own … and he refused to leave and he saved our house,” Mrs Loveland said.
They shared a passionate love for motorbike riding too.
“I’ve got a photo of him on a motorbike when he was nine months old,” Mrs Loveland said, adding Mr Loveland was a regular rider on the Long Ride charity runs which required a minimum journey of 4000km in the name of men’s health.
“He got me into bikes,” she said.
‘Better off being late than killing someone’
In the wake of Mr Loveland’s death, Mrs Loveland is pleading for people to take more care and pay attention on the roads.
This was particularly the case when it came to sharing the roads with motorcyclists, who she said make up one third of Queensland’s road fatalities despite accounting for only one in every 20 registered vehicles.
Mrs Loveland said roads like the Bruce Hwy did need improvements but “it’s not the road that’s killing people, it’s people that are killing people”.
She said the problems were not unique to Tiaro, but occurred at many of the small towns up and down the state’s main roads, including her hometown of Childers.
“Trucks don’t even stop for the red light, in a 60km/h zone, they go through there at 100km/,” Mrs Loveland said. “It’s the same at Tiaro. “They don’t even slow down.”
The speed limit “is the maximum … not the minimum you need to go” and “so many accidents where people are speeding and they’re not driving to condition.”
“Steve’s been riding bikes most of his life … both him and I have ridden motorbikes from one side of the country to the other multiple times … he is the safest rider I know, he doesn’t speed,” she said.
“We used to call him ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ … because he would not go over the speed limit.
“He had no chance.
“People need to slow down, think about what you’re doing on the road, and if you’re going to be two seconds late you’re better off being two seconds late than killing someone, or not arriving at all.”
“Stop being so impatient.”
She implored drivers to “be aware of motorcyclists” too as “people don’t see them because they don’t look for them”.
Doing 10km/h faster “is not going to save you that much time”.
“It’s not worth the risk,” she said.
“Steve was only an hour from home.
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