A road safety expert says a national plan to save lives has failed and will fall significantly short of a "conservative" 10-year target to cut Australia's road toll.
The National Road Safety Strategy in 2010 set out to reduce the number of people dying on the country's roads by 30 per cent by 2020.
But co-chair of a review of the strategy and chair of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons' trauma committee John Crozier says the nation won't make that target.
"It's a tragedy this Christmas to see repeated the toll in terms of lives lost and serious injury on our roads - a significant uptick in that," Dr Crozier told ABC radio on Friday.
"We will probably be in breach by at least 10 per cent of that very conservative target set back in 2010."
The inquiry examining the strategy's progress is due to release its final report in April.
Dr Crozier's comments came after a horror holiday season on Australia's roads.
The toll has prompted calls from the federal opposition for the government to convene an "urgent" meeting of transport and infrastructure ministers.
"The facts and figures and proposals (need to) be on the table so we can have a proper discussion and then action," Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese told reporters in Sydney on Friday.
"For each of the tragedies over this festive season there are families and there are communities who have been left traumatised by the increase in the road toll. This needs to be above politics."
Mr Albanese says any ministerial meeting could discuss a suggestion that all cars carry fire extinguishers and first aid kits.
The calls for the added precautions were made by a woman who was first on the scene at a fiery Boxing Day crash in on the NSW South Coast that killed four and left Home and Away actor Jessica Falkholt in a critical condition.
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