Tragic reminders in our road toll that driving is a privilege that comes with a pulse
She was five. Blonde. A mouthful of baby teeth. Grinning and wearing a flower crown. But that was another life. Because now she’s gone. Another world turned upside down in an instant.
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We don’t know her name. We don’t know if she was on her way to a birthday party or sport or the shops.
What we do know is that she was five. Blonde. With a mouthful of baby teeth.
In her picture she’s grinning and wearing a flower crown.
But that was another life.
Because now she’s gone.
It was a split-second crash with another vehicle. An intersection. Possibly a moment’s inattention.
She lost her life last Saturday at the unfortunately named Luck Road, south of Toowoomba in Queensland.
We don’t know her, but we can see her. And that should be enough.
Enough to shake us, to drag us out of our complacency and make us reframe what it actually means to drive.
Because driving is not quotidian. It’s not casual or benign.
It’s not a right you keep just because you passed a test in 1989 and can still kind of parallel park.
Driving is a privilege that comes with a pulse. The little girl with the flower crown? She was someone’s whole world.
LIVES RUINED IN AN INSTANT
A day later, 1683km away in Victoria, two teenagers also lost their whole world.
It was Mother’s Day. Early evening. They were in the back seat. Their dad was driving. Police say he went through a stop sign and crashed into another vehicle.
The mum, 49, died at the scene while the rest of her family were rushed to hospital.
Perhaps it was because Mother’s Day was the first day of National Road Safety Week. Perhaps it’s because our national road toll is the worst it’s been in years.
Perhaps it was because Detective Sergeant Mark Amos has seen too much. Hurt too much. He didn’t hold back.
It was an absolute tragedy, he said. A crash that should never have occurred. “Just a moment of inattention, a moment’s distraction, you go through a stop sign and you ruin your life and the lives of your family in a single blow.”
The language of road deaths is neutralised and sanitised.
We call them “accidents” as if there is no blame.
We refer to the “road toll” as if it’s a ledger item and “fatalities” as if they’re a faceless and unfortunate consequence of our prosaic need to “get from A to B”.
‘YOU’RE GOING TO LOSE SOMEBODY’
Yet last year 1300 vibrant lives ended violently and shockingly on our roads, the deadliest year since 2012.
Picture that as the equivalent of a large secondary school or three Boeing 747s.
Clearly DS Amos does.
Telling the family, he said, “was no easy task”.
And then he rammed his message home as hard and sharp as the sound of metal on bitumen. “Pay attention, be alert, slow down, concentrate,” he said.
“Without doing that, you’re going to lose somebody. Somebody dear, somebody close and somebody important.”
Yet we don’t pay attention do we?
We’re far too cavalier about the weapons we all so blithely operate.
We treat driving like we’re making a cuppa. Routine.
Done with half our brain while the other half thinks about dinner, or chooses a song or asks Siri to phone a mate because driving is dead time right?
Full transparency, I used to be a shocking driver.
Inattentive and irritated by the time it took up.
But then I exceeded the demerit point limit on my licence. Twice.
I had to re-sit my Knowledge Test and complete a driver education course.
It took hours. Long precious hours.
It’s also one of the most valuable things I’ve ever done.
I have a new-found reverence for the road. I know the facts about speed and I know that teens are five times more likely to use mobile phones behind the wheel if they’ve observed their parents do the same.
I ask my daughters to drive me places so I can quietly check on their habits.
Every time I see a wooden cross on a highway, I picture the person it represents. How can our road toll last year be 18.5% higher than 2021 when a decade-long plan to halve road deaths was introduced?
I also seek out names and faces.
A LETTER FOR CHARLIE
When South Australian police commissioner Grant Stevens wrote a letter to his 18-year-old son Charlie when he became the 101st person to lose his life on the state’s roads in a hit-and-run in 2023 I read every word. Stevens hand wrote the letter in his son’s bedroom where dirty clothes lay on the floor and an empty KFC box spoke to a life that was and would never be again. Charlie, according to his dad, “loved his mum’s curried sausages, but he didn’t know where the dishwasher was.”
‘I’M NUMB’
When I met Danny Abdallah, who lost three children when a driver mounted the footpath in Western Sydney in 2020, he shone with grace.
But we should continue to heed his words the day after his children died. “I’m numb. All I want to say is please, drivers, be careful.”
Driving is a privilege yet its consequences can be as wide as grief and as permanent as the loss of the little girl in the flower crown.
Let’s not wait until tragedy reminds us.
ANGE’S A-LIST
SLEEP HACK: I’d never thought of a “go to bed” alarm but set one up on my phone a few weeks ago. I don’t always abide by it but I like the reminder of my intention to be in bed by 9pm.
SCARLET FEVER: I’m not a fan of red but recently I bought a tomato red cardigan from H & M ($24.99) and it has reinvigorated my wardrobe. Slung over a white shirt and paired with dark denim, camel pants or even with pink, it’s amazingly cherry. Oops … cheery.
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