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What’s behind the ongoing increase in WA road fatalities?
The annual report on crashes that kill or lead to serious injuries on Western Australian roads makes for grim reading.
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9 min read
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Drive
10 min readDrive
The annual report on crashes that kill or lead to serious injuries on Western Australian roads makes for grim reading.
Published
9 min read
Text size
Published
Text size
In 2024, 171 crashes on WA roads led to 188 deaths, the worst result for nearly a decade in which hard-won safety gains seemed to slip away.
Of the 188 fatalities, 61 per cent of them took place in regional areas, a 9 per cent increase from 2023.
While the 1412 serious injuries on WA roads in 2024 was similar to the 2023 figure, the year-on-year increase in deaths and serious injuries is in stark contrast to the WA Government target to reduce the numbers of people killed, severely or seriously injured by 50-70 per cent by 2030.
But as bad as last year was, the first six months of this year were even worse. The number of deaths between January and July in WA was 15 per cent higher than in 2024, and metropolitan road deaths were 63 per cent higher.
“Any death is a tragedy, and any road fatality number is too high,” says Marion Morton, RAC general manager Social Impact. “WA used to be leading, with one of the best records among Australian states and in the OECD in terms of road fatalities, but we are now falling behind. It’s something we should be very concerned about.”
Sadly, we are not alone.
The number of people killed on Australian roads increased from 1097 in 2020 to 1291 in 2024. We are currently averaging 110 deaths a month this year, around 15 more than the five-year average.
In almost every state, authorities are wrestling with the same challenges, begging drivers to slow down and take greater care.
Of course, levels of road trauma have still vastly improved compared with the 1970s. In 1973, there were 3679 fatalities on Australian roads and 358 fatalities on WA roads. These deaths represent raw numbers. When overlaid against rising population, our road safety record has improved even more over time, but has still stalled in recent years.
The road fatality rate per 100,000 Western Australians was 6.2 in 2024, higher than the five-year average, even if a significant improvement over historic rates, which reached as high as 33.5 per 100,000 in the 1970s. Last year our fatality rate was the worst in the country bar the Northern Territory.
And with one in every 20 reported road crashes leading to someone being killed or seriously injured, road trauma remains far too high.
According to WA’s Road Safety Commission, the key culprit remains speed.
“Speed is the underlying factor in the number of people killed and seriously injured on our roads each year,” Road Safety Commissioner Adrian Warner says.
“In 2024, just under half of all fatalities occurred on roads with a speed limit of 100km/h or more, most of these in regional areas. The speed limit is the maximum you should travel under ideal conditions — but throw in fatigue, distractions, weather and other environmental factors and the risk of crashing at speed increases.
“Too many people think that travelling a little bit over the speed limit is okay, but multiply that thinking over WA’s more than two million licensed drivers, and a little bit of risk-taking turns into serious consequences on our roads. We need more people driving at or under the speed limit, more often.”
High speeds are particularly deadly. About 60 per cent of all serious injuries last year occurred on roads with posted speed limits of 70km/h or below, perhaps not surprising considering these make up the vast majority of routes in and around city areas.
But two-thirds of fatalities occurred on roads with limits 80km/h or above, since speed and physics are unforgiving.
At 60km/h, there is a 95 per cent chance of surviving a head-on crash between two light vehicles. Just 10km/h faster and the chances of survival fall to 90 per cent. Collide at 90km/h and the chance of survival is a slim 20 per cent.
For those outside a car, crashes at much lower travelling speeds are often fatal. From January to September 2025, pedestrian deaths were twice that of the same period in 2024.
“A healthy adult struck at 30km/h has a 90 per cent chance of survival. After 50 km/h your chances of survival drop to less than 20 per cent,” says Warner.
“Of the 26 pedestrians who died in 2025 after being hit by vehicles, all but one occurred on roads 50km/h or above.”
A second persistent factor in road deaths is seatbelts. In 2024, a remarkable 16 per cent of people killed inside a vehicle were not wearing a seatbelt, prompting a new campaign to underscore the importance of wearing seatbelts — and wearing them correctly.
“While the majority of people do the right thing and wear their seatbelt correctly – the statistics tell us that about 20 per cent of those killed in motor vehicle crashes over the past decade were not wearing a seatbelt,” Warner says.
Levels of seatbelt non-compliance can now be measured using WA’s new advanced AI-enabled safety cameras, introduced in February 2025.
Six safety camera trailers operating in the Perth metropolitan area, Great Southern and Mid West, and two fixed cameras on the Kwinana Freeway, had as at September 2025, detected more than 275,000 mobile phone, seatbelt and speeding offences.
Between February and August, tens of thousands of warning letters were issued to drivers, with more than 57,671 people detected not wearing a seatbelt or wearing one incorrectly. This represented less than one per cent of vehicles monitored, indicating that people not wearing a seatbelt are massively over-represented in road deaths.
Nearly 82,000 people were detected by the cameras using or holding a mobile phone, and 47,000 were found to be speeding, getting an immediate fine.
Road Safety Commissioner, Adrian Warner, says that during the period caution notices were issued, behaviours had started to change.
“Over the course of a seven-month caution notice period, there had been a decrease in offences detected by the safety cameras,” Warner says.
“Between February and August, mobile phone offences detected by the safety camera trailers dropped nearly 60 per cent and those detected by fixed cameras dropped by 33 per cent.
“Seatbelt offences detected by the trailers also dropped by 34 per cent and 41 per cent by the fixed cameras.
“As well as encouraging self-motivated change, the risk of penalties is also a proven motivator to change behaviour. It’s not about catching people out, we want to see behaviour change.”
As of 8 October 2025, the caution notice period ended and infringements began to be issued.
Shifting behaviour can be a challenge, says road safety researcher Teresa Senserrick, if the activity itself doesn’t necessarily feel unsafe.
The Director of the Western Australian Centre for Road Safety says checking a phone for a second or travelling just a bit above the speed limit doesn’t immediately trigger a sense of risk.
And while people might drive at night with a heightened sense of awareness, nearly 40 per cent of serious and fatal injuries occur in the afternoon, and nearly 20 per cent of fatalities are on Saturdays.
“There are a lot of people who don’t feel like their behaviour is particularly risky because they feel like they are in control,” she says.
“If you think about the way people used to drive before booze buses came in, drinking and driving was pretty common behaviour. People accepted the risk. Then when we brought in booze buses, we changed behaviour. Now, there’s strong agreement that drink-driving is risky and there needs to be enforcement. I think we have a similar challenge with speed, because people don’t always sense how fast they’re travelling.
“As humans we tend to normalise and automate and habituate how we drive, so keeping attention to risk is critical. These are predictable and preventable injuries and deaths, and we can make the change.”
The Road Safety Commission’s response to the increase in road trauma has been to roll out several new safety campaigns, including a first-of-its-kind model to introduce road safety education to Year 7 and 8 students, initially focusing on schools in the regions.
In 2024, nearly 40 people were killed or seriously injured in vehicles where the driver only had a learner’s permit, a 64 per cent jump above the five-year average. Another 76 people were killed or seriously injured in vehicles driven by someone with no licence at all.
Other measures have included speed reduction trials, where communities and authorities are testing lower speed limits on local roads to minimise the risk of harm when a crash occurs and to make streets more welcoming for people walking and riding.
RAC has partnered with the Shire of Augusta Margaret River, with support from Main Roads, on a three-year trial of safer speed limits across approximately 550 local roads. The trial commenced in May 2025 and is accompanied by a comprehensive evaluation to measure the impacts of lower speed limits.
The Perth Inner City Group is also working to reduce speed limits from 50km/h to 40km/h on local streets, replicating the changes already implemented in the City of Vincent.
Better education, coupled with enforcement, will make a difference, says RAC’s Marion Morton, but the only way to bring down the fatality rate is to have multiple safety systems working in unison.
“We support the Safe System approach, which recognises people make mistakes even when they are trying not to,” Morton says.
“When you layer protection, if one part of the system fails, the rest of the system is there to support people.
“So we need to protect people from death and serious injury, and we need safer roads and roadsides. We need safer speeds. We need safer vehicles.
“We need all of these things to come together to make sure that people aren't dying or being permanently injured as a result of just travelling on the roads.”
