Millions of drivers warned over two week 'cold snap' blitz as fines jump to $1250

Yahoo

18 hours ago

Millions of motorists are being warned to stick to the road rules as families head out to enjoy the school holidays and authorities seek to crack down on dangerous and tired driving.
Queensland police are warning they'll be out in force for the next two weeks in a "highly visible and proactive" operation dubbed X-Ray Cold Snap.
The statewide road safety campaign will run until Sunday 13 July when the school holidays comes to an end in the state with police particularly keen to ensure drivers embarking on long trips take precautions.
"Fatigue is a really considerable factor across holiday periods, usually where families travel long distances across unusual roadways and destinations," Acting Chief Superintendent Garrath Channells said.
"The state of Queensland is obviously quite large, and you can travel for extended periods of time. I would just ask anyone that is traveling long distance, particularly on unusual roadways, to drive to the conditions always and take time to stop and rest if you're exceeding two hours of driving, so that you're managing fatigue, and if possible, swap drivers and share the load."
So far this year, there has been 136 road fatalities on the state's roads, that's 7.8 per cent higher than the previous five-year average for the same period.
"And we've had thousands of serious injuries that could be lifelong, traumatic events like a spinal cord injury that that person then has to live with for the rest of their lives, and the family have to provide support for the rest of that time," Superintendent Channells said.
"Poor decision making in a split second can have tragic and traumatic outcomes."
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The winter school holidays are traditionally one of the busiest periods on Queensland roads with police ramping up their presence from today.
The blitz will also coincide with a planned jump in the price of fines for drivers caught doing the wrong thing.
From Tuesday, July 1, motorists caught using their phone behind the wheel or not wearing a seatbelt will cop a whopping $1,250 fine. A similarly expensive hit to the hip pocket will come for drivers exceeding the speed limit by 30km/h.
The fine hikes are the result of a scheduled increase in the value of a penalty unit. While Queensland has by far the toughest financial penalties for drivers, other states also enforce yearly increases in the cost of road fines.
The situation in Queensland reflects a larger, alarming trend. Last year, 1,300 people died on Australian roads — the highest toll since 2012. It's part of a four-year rise in deaths not seen since before seatbelts became mandatory in the 1960s. The final three months of 2024 alone saw 359 lives lost — the deadliest quarter in more than a decade.
Road safety advocate Peter Frazer OAM, whose daughter was killed by a distracted driver, said the problem goes beyond driver error and argues we have a cultural issue when it comes to not taking road safety seriously enough.
"The very first thing that we need to do is to flip everything on its head and start dealing with the reality of risk on our roads," he told Yahoo News Australia recently. "We've got to have our governments start doing much more active enforcement, both police enforcement and also automated enforcement, which we can do immediately."
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