Without accurate data, there's no way to hold state and federal infrastructure ministers to account for the state of rural roads that are killing people, LNP spokesperson for Northern Australia Susan McDonald says.
Nor is there any way of knowing whether the money that is directed to roads is having the desired outcomes.
Senator McDonald, who's very familiar with the state of roads in Queensland's regions, and the awful tragedies behind many of those little white crosses on road verges, has joined with the Australian Automobile Association in calling for urgent federal action on identifying the causes of bad crashes, in light of statistics that show higher risks for non-metropolitan drivers.
According to Ms McDonald, AAA analysis in Queensland showed regional drivers are dying at three times the rate of metropolitan drivers, while in WA the regional driver death rate is nearly 20 times the city rate.
Nationwide, regional drivers are dying about five times the rate of city drivers.
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In addition, a 2022 RACQ analysis showed 17 regional Queensland roads - including seven in North Queensland - were considered "high to medium" risk of serious injury and death.
"What we need to understand is that data is currently reporting regional road deaths in a holistic way, and hospital data isn't being reported in a consistent way, or being used appropriately," Ms McDonald said. "What that means is that there's no way to hold state and federal infrastructure ministers to account."
The National Road Safety Strategy 2021-30 includes a number of targets for 2030, including fatalities reduced by 50 per cent, zero deaths of children 7 years and under, serious injuries reduced by 30 per cent, and zero deaths on all national highways and on high-speed roads covering 80pc of the network.
The AAA said the federal government was unable to measure/track a number of those targets due to a lack of data availability.
"In 2023, Australia is unable to quantify the extent of road trauma, or the effectiveness of interventions being deployed to reduce it," a spokesperson said. "Despite state governments for many years making public commitments to report data regarding serious injuries, road quality, fatality crash data, and enforcement information, the above remain unavailable."
Ms McDonald said there was strong evidence road conditions were a contributing factor to the death rate disparity.
"State governments categorise roads - they have a rating system - that should be very transparent so we can see what is deserving of more funding," she said. "Unless we have that data, we're not getting the outcomes."