Regional Victoria 2024 road toll released by Transport Accident Commission

Regional Victoria’s road toll outpaced Melbourne in 2024, with the motorcyclist tally of increasing concern for police. Here’s why.

More than half of all lives lost in Victoria took place on regional roads in 2024, with motorcyclists a growing concern for police.

Transport Accident Commission data confirmed 282 lives were lost up to December 30 last year with 148 fatalities on regional roads.

The TAC data revealed the regional toll gender split was 106 men and 42 women; in terms of transport mode, 84 of the fatalities were drivers, 27 were motorcyclists, 22 were passengers and 11 were pedestrians.

The region-by-region breakdown of the 2024 regional toll showed the Goulburn Valley had 23 fatalities last year, while there were 17 deaths in the Geelong region and 11 fatalities each in the Ballarat and Warrnambool regions.

While the grim 2024 regional total of 148 fatalities was historically high, police noted it was a reduction on the 2023 spike of 173 fatalities across regional Victoria.

Road policing Assistant Commissioner Glenn Weir said while there was a slight decline in regional road deaths, there were a number of areas of concern with the road toll.

He said motorcyclist deaths increased from 2023 to 2024 — with 27 motorcyclists killed in regional Victoria in 2024 compared to 16 motorcyclists in 2023.

“While we’ve had 15 less people killed on the roads (in 2024), we’ve actually had seven more fatal collisions,” Assistant Commissioner Weir said.

“We still see speed as the single biggest factor of road trauma and certainly some of the detections of driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol are concerning.

“Motorcycles are the big outliers in 2024. Sadly we’ve had a number of people riding motorbikes that have been killed that shouldn’t have been riding – that didn’t have a licence or didn’t have the appropriate licence.”

Alfred Health trauma service deputy director Joseph Matthew said the shift in popularity away from sedans to larger vehicles such as SUVs in the past decade had exacerbated pedestrian collisions both in Melbourne and regional Victoria.

“One of the theories we have is that during the Covid years, people lost the ability to share the road space and pedestrian space with other users,” the Melbourne-based medical expert told ABC radio.

“(The reason is) people were in lockdown and they just lost that cognitive ability to share space, especially when they came back (to using the road) in 2023 and 2024.”