The Australian Automobile Association (AAA) is urging the Commonwealth Government to lead changes to Australian road safety management after new data showed the national road toll rose in each of the past five calendar years. According to the AAA, that is a phenomenon that last occurred in 1952.

The AAA says the Government’s review of the failing National Road Safety Strategy 2021-30 is an opportunity to enhance the Australian Government’s transport safety role and correct the nation’s recent tragic road trauma surge.

Car hospitalisation crash statistic
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Agreed by all Australian governments in 2021, the Strategy aims to halve national road fatalities through the decade to 2030. But five years in, it has instead delivered a 19.8 per cent increase in road deaths, and three of its five headline targets remain unmeasurable.

Australia’s road toll increased again in 2025 (by 1.7 per cent) to 1,314 fatalities, meaning that Australia’s road deaths have risen every year since 2021. According to the AAA, that’s the worst sequence of rising road tolls in more than 70 years.

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According to data supplied by the National Road Safety Data Hub, almost half of 2025 road death victims were drivers (571), a 2.6 per cent decrease from 2024. Motorcyclist deaths were the next most common category (266 deaths, a 4.3 per cent decrease), followed by passenger deaths (204, up 2.5 per cent from 2024). 

Deaths among vulnerable road users (people not travelling in a car, bus or truck) rose by 4.7 per cent in 2025 to 512.

Cyclist deaths rose most in NSW (up 200 per cent from 2024), Western Australia (up 75 per cent) and Queensland (up 62.5 per cent). They declined in South Australia (-50 per cent), Victoria (down 18.2 per cent) and the ACT (-50 per cent). In 2025, there was one cyclist death in Tasmania and none in the Northern Territory.

Pedestrian deaths rose most sharply in South Australia (up 54.5 per cent from 2024), followed by Western Australia (up 26.3 per cent), NSW (up 25.6 per cent), Tasmania (up 25.0 per cent), Queensland (up 15.2 per cent), and Victoria (up 10.6 per cent). Only Northern Territory pedestrian deaths declined, and by 70.6 per cent from 2024.

AAA Managing Director Michael Bradley said: “The AAA is calling on the Commonwealth to extend its powers conduct no-blame investigations of transport fatalities beyond aviation, rail, and maritime incidents, to also examine the factors driving up our road toll.”

“The starting point to addressing our worsening road toll road toll is to understand what’s causing it to rise in the first place. Reducing road trauma requires new road funding; regulatory change; and public education campaigns – all of which will be better targeted, more evidence-based, and more effective if informed by the work of a national investigative body.”