Drivers caught speeding and street racing will now face tougher penalties following significant pressure that forced the ACT government to act on road safety.
Motorists will have their licence automatically suspended if they are caught speeding more than 45kmh over the limit, while street racers will face jail terms for the first time.
The laws, which act on a key coronial recommendation, were passed on Wednesday.
The government had introduced the laws into the Legislative Assembly late last year, after the territory's worst road toll in a decade and a series of crashes galvanised community pressure on the government to make the roads safer.
Transport Minister Chris Steel said the laws would go some of the way to helping address dangerous driving behaviour in the ACT.
"But ultimately it is also up to individuals on our roads to make sure that they're looking out for other people and taking responsibility for their own safety as well," Mr Steel said after the laws passed.
The laws expanded the list of serious road transport offences subject to immediate driver licence suspension and disqualification, while expanding the ability for police to seize and impound vehicles and increasing penalties.
People caught street racing will face fines of up to $16,00 and police will now have the power to seize and impound dangerous drivers' vehicles.
A mandatory reporting scheme for doctors to flag if truck drivers are potentially unfit to drive, a key recommendation after a devastating crash in which a four-year-old was killed, will take a year of work before it launches.
Mr Steel said it would take 12 months to establish the scheme to cover heavy vehicle drivers, which was a recommendation from the coronial inquest into the death nearly five years ago of Blake Corney.
The Canberra Times last year campaigned the coroner's recommendations from the inquest into Blake Corney's death to be adopted nationally, which included more stringent medical assessments and reporting as well as faster take up of modern truck safety technology.
Blake Corney was killed in a major rear-end collision on the Monaro Highway in July 2018 by a truck driver who likely had sleep apnoea for five years and whose doctor knew of his condition.
A coronial inquest recommended a mandatory reporting scheme for health practitioners to report potentially impaired drivers, after it was found the driver who killed Blake suffered from untreated sleep apnoea.
Eighteen people were killed on Canberra's roads in 2022, the highest since 2010, while two people have died so far this year.
Mr Steel also took aim at the Canberra Liberals, who he said had played down the potential impact of casual speeding.
Opposition transport spokesman Mark Parton spoke in the Assembly in support of the bill, saying road safety should not be a political issue and the government had taken sensible steps.
"I think we should be very clear this bill doesn't seek to demonise Canberrans who find themselves on occasion straying over the speed limit. Its focus is instead on those who turn our roads into race tracks and risk lives in the process," Mr Parton said.
Mr Steel later told a press conference Mr Parton's comments were extraordinary.
"The Canberra Liberals suggested that we were demonising drivers for giving them infringement notices when they speed over the speed limit, which is quite an extraordinary claim and it needs to be called out," he said.
"What we know is that if you travel five kilometres over the speed limit, when it's a 60kmh zone, you're double the risk of causing a crash. And if you've travelled 10 kilometres over, you're four times more likely to be causing a crash.
"So that sort of casual attitude to speeding that we've heard in the chamber today is exactly the type of dangerous driving behaviour that we're trying to target through education campaigns."
The government in October announced it would form a law and sentencing advisory council, which Attorney-General Mr Rattenbury said would provide public and independent advice to government.
The government had faced sustained community pressure to commission a review of sentences, which Mr Rattenbury had cautioned against.
"A one-off sentencing review will give you a point-in-time answer, but I actually think having a group that can do sustained work and can proactively look at issues as well as reactively really puts the territory in the best position to have confidence that we are examining the issues that need to be examined," he said in October.
However, Mr Rattenbury this month confirmed an unsuccessful procurement process had delayed the formation of the advisory council but the government was still working to establish the body.
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