Australia's top motoring body slams federal government for road safety failures after death toll rises again

The Australian Automobile Association (AAA) is urging the Australian Government to overhaul its road safety strategy following the release of damning new data on the national road toll.

The country’s peak motoring body, which represents Australia’s motoring clubs and their 10 million-plus members, notes the national road toll has now increased each year over the past five calendar years, which it says last occurred in 1952.

There were 22 more road deaths last year than in 2024, an increase of 1.7 per cent. The number of road fatalities per 100,000 residents was 4.8, unchanged from the year before.

The three most populous states all saw increases in road fatalities, while Tasmania experienced a shocking 41.9 per cent increase with 13 additional deaths and the second-highest fatality rate at 7.6 deaths per 100,000 residents.

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While the Northern Territory’s toll dropped by 36.7 per cent, it still had the highest rate of crash fatalities per 100,000 residents at 14.4.

The AAA says the current National Road Safety Strategy 2021-30 – which aims to halve national road fatalities through the decade to 2030, and cut serious injuries by 30 per cent – is “failing” and is calling on the Australian Government to implement key changes.

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

“The starting point to addressing our worsening 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.”

Here’s a breakdown of last year’s road death toll by jurisdiction:

While motorcyclist deaths fell by 4.3 per cent nationally from 2024, pedestrian deaths rose by 13.2 per cent (and a whopping 54.5 per cent in South Australia alone), while cyclist deaths rose by 32.4 per cent (including a staggering 200 per cent increase in NSW).

The AAA has consistently lobbied the Australian Government to make key changes to its road safety strategy, and it scored a key victory in 2024 when the government included a provision in its five-year intergovernmental road funding agreement requiring states to produce more road safety data.

This led to state governments in Victoria, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) releasing in September 2025 road safety ratings that were made visible on the Australian Road Assessment Program (AusRAP) Dashboard.

MORE: ‘Secret’ safety ratings released, revealing some of Australia’s most dangerous roads