Regional Australians are five times more likely to die in road accidents – so what are we doing about it?

A roadside memorial in the Northern Territory, where the road toll has surged 72.4% in the year to 31 May 2024. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins/The Guardian

It is now a matter of film legend that the Mad Max movie franchise was inspired by long flat Australian country roads where speed limits are theoretical and carnage is regular. Director George Miller grew up in Chinchilla in Queensland, west of the Darling Downs. He remembers a place of loamy soil, heat haze and burnt land, with a very intense car culture.

“The main street of town and Saturday night were just the kids in the cars,” he said in an interview with Australian Screen, the news outlet of the National Film and Sound Archive, in 2006. “By the time we were out of our teens, several of our peers had already been killed or badly injured in car accidents.”