Australia’s road fatality rate has been climbing since 2020, rural roads continue to bear the largest share of deaths, heavy vehicle fatalities are rising sharply, and CTP schemes across three privatised markets are showing the financial strain – each in a different way. For brokers with clients in agriculture, transport, and construction, the data now presents a coherent case for re-examining regional risk assumptions.
In the 12 months to July 2025, there were 1,340 road deaths nationally – a 2.9% increase on the prior 12-month period – with the fatality rate at 4.9 deaths per 100,000 population, up 1.3% year-on-year. Since a low in 2020, total fatalities have been increasing at approximately 4% per year, with the per capita rate rising at an average of 3% annually, reaching 4.78 in 2024. The trend has persisted despite advances in vehicle safety technology, running counter to the actuarial assumptions built during the COVID-era suppression of traffic volumes.
New research from the Australian Road Safety Foundation (ARSF), released for Rural Road Safety Month in August, found that 69% of road fatalities occur in regional and remote areas, with 906 lives lost on rural Australian roads in 2025. BITRE’s Road Trauma Australia 2024 report independently corroborates the geographic concentration: on a per capita basis, fatality rates in inner and outer regional areas are four to five times higher than in major cities, while rates in remote and very remote areas are 10 to 15 times higher. Only 33% of road crash fatalities occur in major city areas – contrasting with hospitalised injuries, where 67% are urban. Deaths generate compensation-to-relatives claims, funeral benefit payments, and in serious-injury cases, long-term care obligations – all materially more expensive per claim than the soft-tissue injuries that dominate urban CTP portfolios.
A separate BITRE series adds a layer directly relevant to transport sector clients. In the 12 months to September 2025, there were 210 road deaths involving heavy vehicles – a 14.8% increase on the prior period – including 99 deaths in crashes involving heavy rigid trucks, up 28.6%, and 109 deaths in crashes involving articulated trucks, up 21.1%. BITRE’s Road Trauma Australia 2024 report shows that in 2023, 16 road deaths in crashes involving articulated trucks occurred in major cities, compared with 99 across inner regional, outer regional, remote, and very remote Australia. Brokers managing fleet policies for clients operating on rural freight corridors face a risk profile that is both geographically concentrated and trending upward.
The financial consequences are visible across NSW, Queensland, and South Australia – but the picture differs meaningfully between jurisdictions, a detail relevant to brokers advising clients who operate across state lines. In NSW, the State Insurance Regulatory Authority’s (SIRA) 2017 CTP Scheme Performance Report to June 30, 2025, shows reported claims have returned to approximately 3,800 per quarter. The average NSW CTP premium rose 7% – or $35 – between June 2024 and June 2025, driven by legislative amendments in 2022 that increased benefits payable, higher levies, and inflation. SIRA committed $2.52 million to road safety research in 2024-25, including programs targeting regional and older drivers.
In Queensland, the Motor Accident Insurance Commission's (MAIC) 2024-25 annual scheme insights report shows claimants received 73% of premiums collected – comfortably above the scheme’s 60% minimum efficiency benchmark. MAIC data shows that while more CTP claims were lodged in metropolitan areas, regional crashes generally led to more severe injuries than metropolitan crashes, driving disproportionate cost. From October 2025, Queensland’s three remaining licensed CTP insurers – Suncorp, Allianz, and QBE – began offering differentiated premiums for some vehicle classes as price competition returned to the scheme following RACQ’s exit in 2023.
In South Australia, the picture is different again. The CTP Regulator’s 2024-25 annual report confirms the scheme’s efficiency index has risen to 53% since competition began in 2019, up from 37% in the pre-competition period – but the lowest available 12-month metropolitan private passenger vehicle premium now sits at 14% of South Australian average weekly earnings, down from 27% when the current scheme began in 2016. SA’s accident data for 2024-25 shows 87% of registered accidents occur in metropolitan Adelaide, but regional accidents across the Murraylands, South, Northern, and Eyre regions generate claims in a fault-based framework where severity thresholds determine compensation access – compounding the cost of the more serious crashes that rural areas disproportionately produce.
The ARSF research found more than a quarter of drivers – 27% – believe rural roads are safer than city streets. The full methodology has not been independently published, but the finding is consistent with BITRE’s fatality distribution data across all remoteness categories. ARSF founder and chair Russell White said human behaviour remained the dominant factor. “Make no mistake, the majority of crashes come down to human fault – whether you live in the city, the regions, or the bush, every single road user makes choices that can have deadly consequences,” White said. He noted that the majority of rural crashes occur in broad daylight, on an ordinary weekday, in a single vehicle – circumstances that describe routine commercial driving. AAMI executive general manager CTP insurance & advocacy Michelle Bain (pictured) said the consequences extended across entire communities. “When a life is lost on a rural road, the impact is felt across entire communities. Families, friends, workplaces, and towns all carry the consequences,” Bain said.
Four data streams now converge: a rising rural road toll, a surge in heavy vehicle fatalities concentrated outside major cities, CTP premium increases across NSW and Queensland, and a structurally distinct SA scheme where fault-based recovery costs interact with a disproportionately severe regional claims profile. Clients in agriculture, regional transport, and construction may be carrying risk priced against assumptions that no longer reflect any of these three markets. That is a renewal conversation – and, given the cross-jurisdictional complexity, one that benefits from a broker who understands how each scheme allocates cost.
