2024 Mackay Whitsundays road toll deadliest in five years

A high school senior, a med student, a young mine worker, a grandmother and heartbreakingly a pregnant mother and her unborn child – these are the victims of the 2024 road toll. SPECIAL REPORT

Aftermath of a crash on the Bruce Highway at Bloomsbury involving two trucks and a car on August 1, 2024. Two people, a man in his 70s and a man in his 20s suffered life threatening injuries and had to extricated. Two other people walked away from the crash stable. Photos taken at 6pm. Picture: Janessa Ekert

Fatigue, speed, drink and drug-driving, inattention, seat belts.

Five vital factors that are the difference between life and death.

Five key warnings that often fall on deaf ears adding to the mounting frustration of Mackay district police, who in 2024 faced the deadliest road toll in at least the past five years.

Twenty-four lives were lost from 18 terrible crashes.

The victims included a 17 year old who only had her licence for days, a uni student studying to be a doctor, a 21-year-old mine worker, interstate and international tourists, a grandmother, a local cyclist and heartbreakingly a pregnant mother and her unborn child.

And while that particular fatal crash, which also claimed the lives of her parents, appears to be a road issue rather than bad driving behaviour, it is only one of two in that category – the remaining 16 crashes are linked to the fatal five.

“The fatal five are just constant factors like they were last year, the year before and again (in 2024),” Mackay Forensic Crash unit officer in charge Sergeant Michael Hollett said.

Several crashes resulted in multiple deaths including the horror bus crash at Gumlu that claimed the lives of three passengers in June.

Of the 18 crashes, at least four were linked to speed, five to inattention, five to drugs and alcohol and five involved fatigue – often there was a combination of the fatal factors leading to the deadly result.

“You get to a point where you think … how many times do we have to tell people? And how many times do we have to remind people, don’t do this on the roads?” Sergeant Hollett said.

The specialist crash investigator said bluntly if a driver did “something stupid”, ignored the fatal five and in doing so hurt or killed themselves “that’s something we can easily deal with”.

“It’s when they involve innocent people. People are just going about their day, have no involvement with anything but because of the idiotic actions of other people … it’s just frustrating for us,” Sergeant Hollett said.

It was especially hard for the officers having to speak to the family of “an innocent victim caught up in someone else’s actions”.

“That gets very difficult,” Sergeant Hollett said.

Mackay Forensic Crash Unit Officer in Charge Sergeant Michael Hollett. Picture: Lillian Watkins.

“They’ve lost a daughter, son, brother, husband, wife through no fault of their own.

In 2023 18 lives were lost from 18 crashes across the Mackay Whitsunday district. While 22 lives were lost in 20 crashes in 2022, which was the highest road toll for five years – that year one driver returned a reading of more than 0.350 per cent, which is seven times the legal limit.

Sergeant Hollett said a common statistic was most fatal crashes were caused by male drivers.

Of the 18 crashes in 2024, 17 were caused by men and one by a woman, and their ages varied from 17 years to 79 years.

In 2023 15 of the fatal crashes were caused by men and two by women, while in 2022 17 were caused by men and three by women.

“The pattern is from the time I’ve been here that the high, very high percentage are caused by males,” Sergeant Hollett said.

“We get the odd one caused by females, but the majority we’re dealing with male drivers.”

Originally published as 2024 Mackay Whitsundays road toll deadliest in five years