New national data reveals huge toll road accidents take on region

Three people have died on Redlands Coast roads since January last year — but hundreds more have been admitted to hospital after serious traffic crashes, new national data reveals.

Three people have died on Redlands Coast roads since January last year — but hundreds more have been admitted to hospital after serious traffic crashes.

Most recently, a 70-year-old woman from Beaudesert never returned home after she was killed when her car collided with a ute at a Redland Bay intersection on March 1.

Police are still trying to piece together what happened and have appealed again for a witness who called triple-0 to contact them.

In January, 16 people were killed on Queensland’s roads.

New national data shows that across Australia 1166 people have died in road crashes since January last year.

Queensland recorded 16 deaths this January alone, one more than the same time last year.

Officer in charge at Redland Bay Police Station Margot Watson said locally there had been a drop in road deaths — but this was no reason for complacency.

“We’ve been very fortunate that our fatalities are down but we still need people to take care,” the acting senior sergeant said.

Police from Redland Bay have run a targeted operation to help decrease the number of road casualties.

“We want to really stress the importance that road safety is everybody’s responsibility.”

Mirroring the Redlands region, the national road toll has also dipped.

Federal Government’s Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics figures show a 6.5 per cent decrease in deaths between 2017 and 2018.

But Centre for Automotive Safety Research director Jeremy Woolley said the statistics did not paint the full picture.

“There’s no indication of serious injuries from road accidents,” Dr Woolley said.

“What we do know is that very conservatively it is estimated that 36,000 people a year are admitted to hospital (due to road accident injury), and some databases put that figure higher. “We are two years off having a national database that will provide an accurate snapshot.”

More than 600 people have been admitted to Redland Hospital emergency after traffic incidents. Picture: Richard Walker

Since January last year, 615 people have been admitted to Redland Hospital’s emergency department for traffic accidents.

This represented about one per cent of all emergency presentations with the majority of serious injuries transferred directly to the Princess Alexandra Hospital.

In the lead up to Easter, act sgt Watson said police had been running Operation Wake Up to keep drivers’ minds on the road.

The operation has seen an increased police presence and officers targeting the fatal five offences — speeding, drink and drug driving, not wearing a seatbelt, driver fatigue and driver distraction.

National data snapshot

— Men are three times more likely to die on Australian roads, outnumbering women 854 to 291.

— Fatal crashes are more likely to happen on a Sunday than any other day of the week

— Most fatal crashes happen during the day, 658 to 425 at night.

— Almost one in five deaths were passengers and 169 crashes involved the death of a pedestrian