Only two states managed to reduce the number of people killed in car crashes during 2012, provision national road toll figures show.
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The Australian Capital Territory and Tasmania recorded a horror year, with the number of deaths jumping 37.5 and 100 per cent respectively.
Despite a bid to reduce road deaths by three per cent each year for the next decade, New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory also recorded significant rises. Victoria and South Australia were the only states where the carnage was reduced.
Last year, 1301 lives were lost nationally compared to 1277 the year before.
See below for a state-by-state breakdown of the results.
VICTORIA
''Another year has ended with its melancholy toll of unnecessary and untimely deaths on Australian roads. Again it is a record tally, higher in every state but Queensland. And again, most likely, the statisticians will tell us that our traffic death rate is the worst in the world. It is a shocking indictment of our behaviour on the roads, all the more shocking for having, apparently, ceased to shock.''
This lament for those killed on the nation's roads was published in The Age on January 4, 1971, days after Australia had just recorded an all-time high road toll of 3798. Victoria had just recorded an all-time high road toll of 1061. The year 1970 remains Australia's and Victoria's worst year for road carnage.
More than 40 years later Victoria's road toll has decreased by almost three-quarters, with Victoria Police reporting an all-time low 279 road deaths in 2012. It is the fifth consecutive year the state has marked a record low road toll.
Robert Hill, Assistant Commissioner for Road Policing, said the huge reduction in the road toll in recent decades was ''encouraging'', but nothing to celebrate and ''still 279 too many to lose''.
The official road toll will be finalised on February 1, but Mr Hill noted the provisional result showed more women had been killed on Victoria's roads last year than in 2011 (83, up from 76) and more elderly people (113 aged 50 and over, compared to 103).The majority of fatalities occurred on country roads (152, compared to 127 on city roads).
The toll also included a 29 per cent drop in the number of pedestrians killed and a 17 per cent drop in motorcyclist deaths.
NSW
Road deaths in Australia’s most populous state climbed in 2012 but the overall toll is still one of the lowest on record.
Roads Minister Duncan Gay said provisional road toll figures show the 2012 road toll has not continued the record trend set the previous year, which was lowest road toll since 1932.
“This year the provisional road toll is sadly up six to 370, from the 364 people killed in 2011,” Mr Gay said in a statement.
“While this is still the second lowest toll since 1932, we need to return to the downward trend.
“These are people who did not see in the New Year with their loved ones and whose loss around the family table has been keenly felt especially in this holiday period.”
The main increases in deaths were among passengers, motorcyclists and pedestrians. Passenger deaths were up by 11 per cent compared 2011. Fifty-four pedestrians were killed – 10 per cent more than 2011’s total of 49. There were 60 motorcycle-user deaths in 2012 compared with 51 in 2011.
Roads in northern, southern and south-western NSW experienced less road deaths in 2012 compared to 2011. Deaths rose in Sydney, the Hunter and southern NSW.
TASMANIA
Driving too fast for the road conditions, inexperience and alcohol were the biggest killers on Tasmanian roads last year.
The state's road toll climbed to 33 with the death of an 18-year-old Launceston man in a head-on collision near St Helens on New Year's Eve.
It's a significant jump from a record low of 24 in 2011, and up from the previous record low of 31 in 2010.
Road Safety Advisory Council president John Gledhill said the number of fatal crashes might have increased but the causes remained the same.
``Speed, drink-driving and inattention accounted for almost all of the crashes in 2012,'' Mr Gledhill said.
``But sometimes it's sheer bad luck.''
Mr Gledhill put the bus crash that killed three terminal cancer patients on the Bass Highway at Elizabeth Town on September 12 into the bad luck category.
The crash occurred when the bus, ferrying patients back to the North-West Coast from the Launceston General Hospital's Holman Clinic, struck a wayward trailer.
It was the only multiple fatality in Tasmania this year.
Mr Gledhill said that in many cases drivers were sticking to the speed limit, but they had come unstuck because they were travelling faster than was safe for the road conditions.
Mr Gledhill said several fatal crashes in 2012 took place on country roads that would have their speed limit reduced from 100 km/h to 90 km/h this year.
State Infrastructure Minister David O'Byrne said the planned lowering of the speed limit on some country roads could prevent 100 fatal crashes in the next six years.
There were 223 people seriously injured in road crashes between January 1 and November 30 last year, compared with 251 for the same period in 2011.
SOUTH AUSTRALIA
A record-low road toll in South Australia during 2012 has given police little cause for celebration.
"We believe one death is still one too many,” said Assistant Commissioner Linda Williams.
Ninety-three people killed on SA roads last year, compared with 103 in 2011. About 785 people suffered serious injuries in motor vehicle crashes compared with 946 the year before.
The result is a far cry from the state’s worst road toll result – 382 deaths in 1973.
"We recognise that this has come about because of the good work of many including the vast majority of responsible South Australian road users,” Assistant Commissioner Williams said.
"But despite this decrease we should never forget that this is 93 people who have left families and friends behind.”
*Information about the Queensland and Western Australian road toll will be available shortly.
