A powerful display featuring 820 pairs of shoes – each representing a life lost on Australia’s rural roads in 2024 – has been put together at Grafton for the launch of this year’s Rural Road Safety Month.
Held each September, Rural Road Safety Month is an initiative of the Australian Road Safety Foundation. The theme for 2025 is Step Up for Road Safety.
Over the last financial year, 205 lives were lost from crashes involving heavy vehicles.
Almost 60 per cent of those fatalities occurred in rural or remote areas.
And 820 of the 1297 road deaths recorded in 2024 occurred in rural and remote areas, despite being less densely populated.
NHVR Chief Operations Officer Paul Salvati said, “When travelling through rural or remote roads in Australia, there’s unique challenges and risks involved compared to travelling in suburban areas.
“You’re more likely to encounter larger trucks which require longer distances to stop safely and have multiple blind spots, meaning the driver may not know you’re there.”
Salvati is reminding motorists that trucks are vital to keeping Australia moving – and that everyone has a crucial role to play in keeping our roads safe.
“That means giving trucks extra space, only overtaking when it’s safe, and always keeping a safe following distance,” he said.
“Losing loved ones in a road accident is a tragedy, so we want to remind all drivers to take extra caution when getting behind the wheel.
“Every road user can reduce the risk – slow down, stay alert, be patient around heavy vehicles and never risk taking a chance with it comes to safety.”
Transport for NSW Senior Manager Community and Place Partner for North Coast Brad Crispin echoed this message, “We want to encourage all members of the community to step up and do their bit for road safety, both through their behaviour on the roads but also by talking to their friends and family and sharing road safety messages and urging them to step up too.
“While country residents make up about one third of the state’s population, more than two-thirds of the lives lost on NSW roads happen on regional roads,” Crispin continued.
“The disproportionate death rate is in spite of improvements in vehicle safety technology, road upgrades and consistent messaging to slow down, take regular breaks and drive to the conditions.
“Fatalities on NSW country roads where the speed limit is 80 km/h and above rose by more than 12 per cent in 2024 compared to 2023, with fatigue a key factor.
“Every death is one too many – this was an additional 15 lives lost in just 12 months.”
However fuel transport business Lowes Petroleum says more needs to be done to improve the roads our truck drivers travel on.
The major fuel transporter said that until governments fund safe, high-quality roads and deliver adequate rest areas, the industry will be unable to meet the National Road Safety Strategy of reducing fatalities and serious injuries by 2030.
As the company shows it support Rural Road Safety Month, and the theme Step Up for Road Safety, Lowes Petroleum is asking motorists to put themselves in a truck driver’s shoes.
During the 12 months ending March 2025, 157 people died in crashes involving heavy trucks, Lowes explained. There were 93 deaths in crashes involving articulated trucks and 73 deaths in crashes involving heavy rigid trucks.
Research by the ARSF reveals the harrowing human factor behind driver statistics, showing that widespread complacency and misplaced confidence are continuing to cost lives on country roads.
According to the data, more than 1 in 4 drivers (27 per cent) admit to relaxing their safety standards when outside city limits. This alarming trend is likely linked to the belief – held by nearly 1 in 3 Australians (29 per cent) – that rural roads are safer than urban streets, Lowes said.
Lowes Petroleum’s General Manager of Health, Safety, Security and Environment (HSSE) Bernie Morris added that most truck accidents occurred between midnight and 6am and in those peak holiday periods of Easter and Christmas.
Morris is calling for more transparency and the sharing of information within the industry from independent safety road crash investigations to ensure lessons were not only learnt but to make active and real progress.
“The ARSF report found that almost 8 in 10 drivers (79 per cent) say road safety messaging makes them a more responsible road user,” he said. “Signs, news coverage, and real-life trauma stories were identified as the most powerful motivators for change. The data shows that education works.
“There still needs to be education around how motorists share the road with trucks: often cutting in abruptly, lingering in blind spots, or miscalculating the time and distance needed for these heavy vehicles to come to a stop.
“People respond to reminders, stories, and signs. So, we are putting up signs in all our depots and service stations reminding people to think about how they drive and how it might impact someone else’s life.
“Our drivers are impacted and haunted by road deaths, even when they are not at fault. We have one driver 10 years on who still shares the pain for a family who lost three children in one accident.”
As Morris continued, “It is not an exaggeration to say almost everyone shares the pain: pain that resonates through the community. We are asking motorists to think twice before they overtake or think about what the truck is hauling before they take what could be a reckless action.
“The most impactful messages are those that put human life front and centre. While 43 per cent of Australian drivers admit they don’t often think about the lives of others when on the road, more than half (56 per cent) say knowing someone’s child is in the car ahead would prompt them to drive more cautiously – and we are all someone’s child.”
Rarely a day goes by when Mr Morris isn’t left gobsmacked after reviewing the deadliest of driver dash cam footage, in his HSSE role, as motorists take risks on rural roads they would not take in the city.
With over 200 drivers transporting millions of litres of fuel a year across hundreds of thousands of kilometres of rural roads a year, the footage almost makes his heart stop.
“We review every accident and near miss – always questioning ‘did we do everything within our power to avoid an accident?’ and in one video you can see that, scarily, it can just take a few seconds for an accident to happen.
“In one of our dash cams, our driver looks down at his run screen for less than two seconds only to look up and see an out-of-control car careering towards him and he takes evasive action in a split second avoiding a collision.”