Queensland's most senior road policing officer is mystified and alarmed by driving practices after a deadly start to the Christmas holiday period in the Sunshine State.
Assistant Commissioner Mike Keating made a desperate plea to motorists on Monday after seven people were killed on Queensland roads over the weekend.
The spate of fatalities has taken the state's road toll to 236, two more than the same time last year, and has prompted police to urge drivers to take road safety seriously.
Mr Keating said before the start of the month the state's road toll was 12 below the same stage last year, when 243 people died, but now it is two more.
The latest deaths were two motorcyclists who crashed their bikes hours apart on Ipswich-Boonah Road, south of Ipswich, on Sunday, with one dying in hospital on Monday morning.
"I was mystified yesterday as I saw the road toll increasing," the head of road policing command said.
"The situations that were occurring, where they were occurring, and the connection between them were mystifying."
Two pedestrians, another motorcyclist, a car driver and a truck driver whose B-double rolled also died in separate accidents since Friday night.
"None of those seven deaths were what we would classify as holiday-related travellers - these were Queenslanders going about their normal activities on the weekend," Mr Keating said.
He said police were too often seeing fatal accidents which were avoidable and preventable.
They will target speeding on a number of days over the peak Christmas period just as they did over Easter when the state went fatality free.
Police released vision of one motorist travelling at speeds near 150 km/h near Gympie on the weekend to show how many drivers are behaving recklessly.
"I can't explain it" Mr Keating said.
"Some people think the irrefutable laws of physics don't apply to them. They do.
"Alarmingly, we have surpassed the total number of fatalities in December last year in just the first 11 days of December this year."
Police are not including the death of an 81-year-old woman at Gladstone on Friday night in the toll figures as it has been deemed off-road.
The woman was killed when a 74-year-old driver reversed into a parked car which then hit a group of pedestrians.
A 75-year-old woman was also flown to a Brisbane hospital in a serious condition.
