If 400 people died at once, we’d want action

So how is it that 400 people did lose their lives needlessly in 2017 and the national conversation is at best muted about bringing our road toll down?

Yes, we see the pleas from police for motorists to slow down, drive to the conditions, not to drink or use beforehand, not to be distracted by mobile phones and not to drive when fatigued.

But because the deaths are spread out over the year and over the entire country – with spikes during the busy Christmas and Easter holidays – we tend to become desensitised to them. Until, that is, we suffer a string of fatalities on local roads. It’s then that the horror of our entirely unacceptable road toll hits home.

And when a local person – in the Shoalhaven’s case, Lisa Elmas of Narrawallee – comes upon a second dreadful crash less than three weeks after pulling victims out of burning vehicles at another collision that so far has claimed four lives, the horror is amplified.

Lisa’s words after coming across the accident at Milton last week speak volumes. “It’s too much,” she said, explaining her decision to turn around and avoid the scene. Emergency services were already at the crash site, tending to victims. 

On a scenic local road, a mother lost her life, a child was seriously injured and a father left fighting for his life.

Five deaths on local roads in less than three weeks – yes, as Lisa said, it is too much. Any death or injury that could have been avoided is one death too many.

So what can we do?

It starts with educating our children, showing them by example how to drive carefully. Displays of poor behaviour such as impatience, risk-taking, distraction and recklessness are absorbed by kids and can set them up with bad habits for the rest of their lives.

Penalties for serious driving offences need to reflect the calamitous potential of poor behaviour. People with dreadful driving records need to be taken off the road permanently. And if they get back behind the wheel, perhaps jail is the only way to ensure they don’t reoffend.

The loss of 400 lives in one year in NSW is unacceptable.