IN BRIEF
- Official numbers on road fatalities have risen for five consecutive years.
- The National Road Safety Strategy aims to achieve zero deaths on roads by 2050.
Behind the cold statistic of Australia's annual road toll are thousands of individual stories — lives once lived, futures cut short, and families left with grief.
Peter Frazer's story is one of them.
Some 14 years ago, on 15 February 2012, his 23-year-old daughter, Sarah, lost her life on the Hume Highway when a truck ploughed into her broken-down car.
"My beautiful daughter, all her life had been taken away, because of the action of someone who was acting irresponsibly, because they were a distracted truck driver," he told SBS News.
"The grief becomes profound. It stays with you for the rest of your life.
"For many people, they felt hard to get up in the morning, let alone to actually go back to their normal routines and the like."
Sarah wasn't the only life lost that day, on that road — Geoffrey Clark, a 40-year-old tow-truck driver who stopped to help her, was also killed when the distracted driver crashed into them.
The breakdown lane they were in was just 1.5m wide.
Peter Khoury, a spokesperson of NRMA Insurance, told SBS News: "There was absolutely no reason for those lives that have been lost on that day."
"There's no reason why anyone should lose their lives when they're on the side of the road, and that is one of the many challenges that we face across the road network today, and trying to reduce the road toll."
Those 'who never made it home'
Frazer has since founded the Safer Australian Roads and Highways Group, also known as SARAH Group, in memory of his daughter, which aims to increase road safety in Australia.
But despite advances in vehicle technology and enforcement, Australia's road toll is climbing again.
Official numbers on road fatalities have risen for five consecutive years, with 1,316 deaths in 2025.
According to Ehssan Veiszadeh, CEO of Roads Australia, "the rate has been steadily going up for the last five years".
"These are not, of course, numbers and statistics. These are people, right? Friends, family members, children who never made it home from an ordinary trip to the shops, at school or work," he told SBS News.
The numbers haven't improved in 2026. In January, 106 people were killed on the roads across Australia, 6.2 per cent higher than the average for January over the previous five years, and the second deadliest January since 2021.
A report from Road Safety Australia this week warned that the increase in deaths in the past years has put the nation off track to meet its 2030 target to halve road deaths compared to 2018-2020 levels.
The National Road Safety Strategy aims to achieve 'Vision Zero' — zero deaths and serious injuries on roads by 2050.
Roads Australia finds road fatalities are not limited only to highways and freeways.
It shows 40 per cent of deaths are occurring on high-capacity urban roads and local streets — places where communities expect lower speeds and safer conditions than on highways.
'A right to get home safe'
As cities become denser and vehicles become larger, experts say street designs and simple cost-effective measures can save lives.
"The humble wombat crossing ... that raises the visibility of people walking, whether it's children or elderly people or others," Veiszadeh said.
"They've proven to work. They've reduced the fatal and serious crashes by 67 per cent and reduced total crashes by 61 per cent where they've been implemented."
Street designs aren't the only thing to blame, as behaviour behind the wheel remains a critical factor.
"If a pedestrian is struck at 50km/h, there's a 90 per cent chance of death. At 40km/h, there's a 40 per cent chance of death, and at 30km/h, that's reduced to just 10 per cent chance of death," Veiszadeh said.
In 2025, Roads Australia reported a significant surge in road fatalities on streets with a 50km/h speed limit, rising by nearly 20 per cent.
Furthermore, there was a 13 per cent rise in pedestrian fatalities compared to 2024, along with a 32 per cent increase in cyclist deaths.
Experts say Australia's rising road toll can't be solved with a single measure, and call for deeper investigations into crashes.
"If the solution was, let's just cut speed limits everywhere and put up cameras, then that's what we should do," Khoury said.
"But we've seen jurisdictions try that. It hasn't worked, and so that is a frustrating thing for policymakers and for any organisation that is interested in road safety, like the NRMA.
"What that means is we need to do more of everything and particularly focus on the things that we know work."
Road Australia has also called governments to "review these trends and provide councils with the funding and expertise needed to implement proven, life-saving street safety measures".
For Frazer, road safety is not only a policy debate but a lived reality — a right that was taken away from his daughter.
"Everyone has a right to get home safe to their loved ones every day without exception, and that relies on us all actively looking after those on the road ahead."
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