Top reasons for car crashes, according to Toowoomba's police and firefighters

Toowoomba's emergency workers have revealed the reasons behind the horrific crashes that has put the region on the path of the most deadly year on record.

As part of Queensland Road Safety Week, Toowoomba’s firefighters and police officers warn of the many reasons they see fatal crashes occur on the community’s roads which can be avoided.

Texting, switching songs or radio stations, and even making TikToks while driving were some of the most common reasons why they’ve seen drivers crash, Queensland Police crime prevention officer for the Darling Downs District, Tony Rehn said at a road safety event outside PCYC on Tuesday.

“At 60 kilometres out, if you look away from the road for two seconds … you've travelled around about 36 metres at 60 kilometres an hour,” he said.

“Some kid walks out in front of you, 36 metres later, that's the end of that, you got nothing.”

Mr Rehn said the hardest part for him is when he sees a passenger of a vehicle killed because of poor driving.

“If a driver gets killed, well their actions are what caused it,” he said.

“We have been to too many things, whether its's been busted bodies on the ground, and bits of bodies over there and bits of bodies over there and bits and bobs.”

Toowoomba Fire Stations' station officer Scott Teakle said inattention is one of key reasons they see incidents occur, alongside fatigue and driving under the influence of alcohol or substances.

“Inattention is probably one of the ones that we quite often have. Unfortunately, when we get to incidents, there are signs that there‘s been an attention distraction,” he said.

“There’s a reason the police don‘t want P-platers having phones or Bluetooth devices in their car because it is a distraction.”

Mr Teakle said the first thing police and forensic teams do when they arrive at a crash site and there’s a mobile phone found in the vehicle, is download its contents to see if the phone had been used while driving.

“I think a big thing too is that they think they can hide it. But unfortunately, the technology is there, and they’ll soon find out whether you were on your phone or whatever at that time. The history is there,” he said.

Queensland Road Safety Week ran from Monday, August 22 through to Friday, August 26.