The toll would not be acceptable if it was from violent crime or drug abuse and there would be a national outcry if that number of people died from a deadly disease.
No one had revealed  this unacceptable death rate toll until last week, when one of the State’s tough-talking senior police decided it was time to take a stand.

Assistant Commissioner Steve Bradshaw, a straight-talking, experienced copper, didn’t pull any punches. He said the carnage had to stop now.

Carnage has been just what it is. Only last week, in a 48-hour period, four people died in three separate accidents, including a road-safety campaigner and former country mayor.

Three weeks earlier, in a horror smash near Parkes, four lives were taken in one accident. It could have been more, with one couple lucky to survive a side-swipe and car rollover.

Single-vehicle accidents with solo drivers feature prominently in the western region’s road accident statistics.

Some of the accidents have ended up with vehicles hitting trees, suggesting either fatigue or vehicle failure.

Most people I speak to about the issue believe the rising country road toll can be put down to tiredness or motorists being unable to handle road conditions.

Increasing numbers of retired Australians are taking to the country’s bush roads after a life of driving on suburban streets.

Many of these retirees simply hook caravans to the back of four-wheel-drive vehicles and go bush.

Unlike professional, licensed drivers who must maintain log books and strict driving hours _ except of course the pill-popping cowboy minority _ these happy-go-lucky adventurers just take off.

It seems many of them underestimate the distances they need to travel, the condition of the roads and the dangers waiting for them out there. People try to travel too far in a day and get fatigued, driving into late evening with blinding sunsets and wildlife posing dangers.

Of course, no one teaches these people how to safely tow heavy caravans or drive bulky camper-vans properly.

It’s not just the grey nomads posing the problem, though. In the Outback, massive road trains thunder along inadequate roads that are either poorly maintained or not maintained at all, trying to meet impossible deadlines for bosses. We also have P-plate novices with no country driving experience and, as always, the drunks and speed demons.

An email to me last week from Alison Carter in Parkes, near where much of this carnage has happened, made the point that a lack of overtaking lanes and general road maintenance were huge contributors.

She drives for a living and says frustration and impatience on what are becoming crowded rural roads plays a huge part in the death toll. As Alison says, we all hear about millions of dollars being spent on Sydney’s road tunnels with budgets overblown, but bugger-all money is spent west of Penrith.

Her point about impatience is one made by the tough talking Assistant Commissioner. He says: “I drive the roads up here every day and I regularly see people being impatient, driving on the wrong side of the road attempting to overtake other vehicles at inappropriate times.”

Steve Bradshaw pulls them over, deals with it, and presumably gives them an earful. The problem is the State doesn’t have enough Steve Bradshaws.

His blunt warning is: slow down, think what you are doing and take more care in planning long trips. Take more care behind the wheel is his simple message.

This senior police officer who has seen too much blood also has a warning about driver distractions like mobile phones and CD players. People get too easily distracted and as a few pointed out this week cruise control and air-conditioning in moderncars has made it easier tolose concentration.

Sixty-nine motorists’ families will not be seeing them this Christmas. Sixty-nine funerals have had to be held.
Women and men have been widowed and children left without a mum or a dad.

It’s not a racy tale of the death toll from heroin or a boat sinking or a terrorist attack, it’s simply a stupid waste of life.