Queensland’s 2018 road toll set to be one of the lowest

Queensland is set to record one of its lowest road tolls in history, but it’s still not enough for our senior police.

QUEENSLAND is set to record one of its lowest road tolls in history, but senior police say people are still dying unnecessarily.

The official toll was expected to rise to 243 deaths after a motorcyclist in Brisbane and a motorist at Goomeri, west of Gympie, were killed in accidents yesterday.

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The lowest road toll in Queensland’s history was 223 in 2014, and the second lowest 243 in 2015.

Road Policing Command Assistant Commissioner Mike Keating said motorists were still taking too many risks on the road.

“In the last week or so we’ve got 50-odd people not wearing their seatbelts,” he told The Courier-Mail.

“These are just basic things really aren’t they … wear a seatbelt and you’re much more likely to survive a crash.

“I think if people don’t wear their seatbelt, that’s a deliberate act.

“People are taking that risk completely unnecessarily and completely knowing that they should be wearing their seatbelts.”

Road Policing Command Assistant Commissioner Mike Keating

Mr Keating said the rate of fatalities and injuries of people not restrained was “quite common” in regional areas and it was disproportional to the population.

He said about 30 pedestrians had died on Queensland roads in 2018.

“The trends have been better in relation to motorcycles this year compared to previous years but they are still disproportionately referenced in the number of injuries and fatalities compared to the number of registered motorcycles and cars,” he said.

Over the Christmas period, police have caught 281 drink drivers, 217 drug drivers, fined 135 people for not wearing seatbelts and more than 100 people using mobile phones in the period.

They’ve also issued more than 27,000 speeding fines.

“We talk about drug driving and drink driving, but speeding is the big factor,” Mr Keating said.

“If people understood the physics of speeding and deceleration and impact and all of those things, there is no surprises when people get seriously injured or die when they are driving at excessive speeds.”

Mr Keating said police hoped for a better road toll result in 2019.

“We have a responsibility to ourselves and to passengers and to people around us to ensure we do the right thing and improve our own safety and their safety,” he said of motorists.

“We’ve got to be conscious of where we are, what we’re doing and make good decisions for our own safety.”

Mr Keating said police would focus on registration, seatbelts and impaired driving in 2019.

Extra resources would also be put into regional areas as there had been challenges there in the past year, he said.