Leroy Brown shares his story during National Road Safety Week in a bid to keep others safe behind the wheel

The 21-year-old butcher was driving home along a road west of Blackall he'd used many times before when his vehicle left the roadway and rolled on Australia Day morning.

"I was looking across the paddock at a dingo and I just took my eyes off the road, drifted off the road and hit a hole in the culvert, which then caused the car to get airborne and I over-corrected it and went over," he said.

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His car was a write-off; the roll bar around his vehicle was the only thing keeping it from crushing Leroy inside the cab.

"The car was buggered," he said.

"I was lucky to get out of it alive.

"I fractured my C5 and C6 (vertebrae in the neck) and had a couple of scratches, pretty lucky."

He lost consciousness for around 30 minutes and his next memory is outside of the vehicle where his 18 attempts to call 000 failed in the poor service area.

All he could do was sit and wait for help.

While it was only 15 to 20 minutes before a passing truck driver came across Leroy, his parents weren't too far behind.

"I had alerted Mum when I was going from where I was and she knew that I wasn't home so they were already on their way out, they knew there was something wrong as well," he said.

"I thought I was a comfortable driver and I could go off the road a little bit and thought I'd be right. It was just so easy to do."

Leroy considered himself a safe and capable driver and it was only complacency that led to his single-vehicle accident.

He takes comfort in knowing that somebody would have come to his aid and hopes other people will remember the importance of messaging their whereabouts to a loved one this Road Safety Week.

"Tell people where you are going," he said.

"Don't be worried if they're not going to like it or not, just tell someone where you are so then if anything happens people can find you or they know where to start looking; that would be my biggest message.

"And also, keep an eye out for people along the road. Just think, if your family were in that situation, what would you do?"

Back at his base in Gayndah, he now has a new set of wheels and is back on the road after two weeks of bed rest and eight weeks in a neck brace.

"I'd driven it (Emmett Road) a fair few times and I knew the road," he said.

"I knew that a lot of cars actually have to get off the road because its only a single lane road but just that one spot, obviously that hole has been there for a long time, but nobody has ever had to get off there and been pretty lucky.

"I was pretty complacent about what the road was like.

"Now, when I go to do stuff I have to think twice about it.

"When I'm going into a corner or something it's double concentration now rather than single."

More mobile phone towers and defensive driving courses are two of the things Leroy's mum Tracy Brown would like to see as a result of their experience.

She and husband Trevor knew Leroy was late in from a night of roo shooting and were hoping it was just because he'd called in to a property to ask about shooting there.

"But you do think the worst," Tracy said. "By the time we knew (he'd had an accident), he was with someone so that was good."

When they arrived at the hospital with Leroy they were asked why they hadn't rung for an ambulance.

The accident occurred 80km from Blackall and as Tracy said, 'you don't have service along that road for ages".

Narrow bitumen that means people have to move onto the dirt to pass other vehicles can be a driving challenge for people who haven't had a lot of experience with the challenges of loose gravel, which Tracy thought might be addressed by more opportunities for defensive driver training.

"If you don't have experience on dirt, that can cause an accident as well," she said.

"I'm pretty sure Leroy didn't get any defensive driving training, but the thing is, they've got to do their 100 hours but most of that's just driving round town or some distances.

"It's good, the 100 hours, but it'd be good if they were made to do a defensive driving course as well."

She thought a government incentive scheme, such as a reduction in the number of hours driven in order to get P plates, could be a way of building off-road skills into the driver education system.

"We were lucky - I think the only reason Leroy got out of it was because he had a big roll bar. If he didn't have that he'd have been crushed," Tracy said.