Road safety campaign is ‘failing’

Governments around Australia need to rethink their road safety campaigns to turn around a rising road toll.

That’s the findings from the latest road safety report from the Australian Automobile Association (AAA) – Benchmarking the Progress of the National Road Safety Strategy (2021-30). The report claims the national road toll has increased in the first half of 2025, with 1329 people dying in motor vehicle accidents.

That’s a 3.3 per cent increase on the same period in 2024 and comes as the state governments agreed to a 2021 National Road Safety Strategy that aimed to cut the road toll by 50 per cent by the end of the decade.

“The National Road Safety Strategy is failing and governments must consider what steps they can take to make it more effective,” said AAA Managing Director, Michael Bradley.

He made it clear that there are no key indicators that the current strategy – which is largely focused on speeding – is working to reduce the number of deaths of either motorsists or pedestrians.

At the current rate, not only will states fail to half the road toll by 2030, but deaths could actually increase.

“Australia’s National Road Safety Strategy 2021–30 aims to halve road deaths through the decade to 2030. Yet Australia’s 12-month road toll is now 21.1 per cent higher than when the strategy began. No state or territory is on track to meet its NRSS targets,” Bradley said.

“In the 12 months to 30 June 2025, 1,329 people died on Australian roads. This is 3.3 per cent higher than the previous corresponding period’s 1,287 death toll, which itself was 9.7 per cent higher than total crash fatalities in the 12 months to 30 June 2023.”

New South Wales recorded the most fatalities, with 362 people losing their lives, which is a 6.8 per cent increase on 2024. Victoria and Queensland were next with 296 deaths, while Tasmania reported a tragically high surge of 84.6 per cent more road fatalities in the first six months of 2025.