Drastic drop in road safety enforcement linked to rising road toll

ABC NEWS (Australia)

The ABC can reveal shocking statistics showing a major decline in the hours Queensland Police are spending enforcing road safety. It comes, as the state is on track to record its worst annual road toll in years. Road safety advocates are calling for more random breath tests, but police say their frontline is already under pressure.

Transcript

00:00Queensland's road toll is rapidly rising.

00:07We are in a road safety crisis.

00:10After a record low in 2019, 302 people died on our roads last year.

00:17Already this year there's been more than 250 fatalities.

00:22I'd say from 2013 to 2019 there was a concerted effort in road safety across Queensland and it really did have amazing results.

00:32And then we had COVID and rightly or wrongly road safety was no longer the priority.

00:39Enforcement hours have decreased since the COVID pandemic but we're trying to turn that around.

00:46In 2019 police logged about 890,000 road safety enforcement hours. By 2024 it fell to fewer than 500,000.

00:57Certainly has been a reduction and some of that can be attributed to the way we actually record this information.

01:03But police also point to a front line under pressure.

01:07The increased calls for service around domestic and family violence and also the youth crime space has certainly put pressure on our front line.

01:15Police were also diverted from their usual traffic duties during COVID.

01:21Mark Wheeler warns that's led to a change in driver behaviour for the worse.

01:26And I think that there are generations of young road users and drivers who have never been intercepted.

01:34We've had a change in driver behaviour due to the lack of law enforcement.

01:38Road safety advocates are calling for a target of one random breath test per driver every year.

01:44That would equate to more than 4 million tests annually.

01:48At the end of this year, if we're gold standard, we should have over 4 million RBT.

01:52Giving an arbitrary number I don't believe is helpful.

01:57In 2018-19 police conducted 2.66 million RBTs.

02:03After dipping during COVID in 2024-25, they did 2.14 million tests.

02:10The overall number of drink driving offences has remained fairly steady.

02:15Police insist they're already ramping up their efforts, so far logging more than 390,000 enforcement hours this year.

02:25But advocates warn Queensland's road safety crisis has no quick fix.

02:31You don't get results unless road safety is visible.

02:34You don't get results unless anyone has no idea ofち.

02:44You don't want to cut your bist showcase on anyugenics or carballs in 2001.

02:47You don't want to cut in horrible weapons.

02:51Number 4.

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