LOST BOYS: SEVEN YOUNG DRIVERS DEAD IN SIX MONTHS
SEVEN young men under the age of 26 have been behind the wheel of cars involved in fatal crashes on Territory roads this year.
Young men with their lives ahead of them. Embarking on careers, footy, their own young families and even their final year of school.
The tragic figures come as NT Police relaunch the Enough’s Enough campaign imploring motorists to wear seat belts.
Nearly all the deaths were preventable, with speed a factor in most of the crashes.
The year of carnage began in January with Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Catholic College’s Servando Tuazon, 17, one of two people killed in a two-vehicle accident 15km outside Alice Springs.
In the other car, a married couple. A 73-year-old man lost his wife, aged 67, and was hospitalised with serious injuries.
In February, 20-year-old soldier Matthew James crashed a Subaru sports car into two sets of traffic lights on Tiger Brennan Drive and the car burst into flames.
The gunner was remembered by his family as a hilarious character who was always happy and laughing.
Litchfield Bears Rugby League player Braden Scott, 22, died in March when his motorbike hit a power pole on Lovelock Rd in the rural area.
Dylan Tuckwell, 19, died when his car rolled and burst into flames on the Ross Highway, 12km from the Ross River homestead, while driving to the Wide Open Spaces festival in April.
Nigerian environmental management student at Charles Darwin University, Emmanuel Oluwaseyi Ajadi, died on June 16 while leaving the Inpex site on Wickham Point Rd.
Bangladeshi student Irfan Munna, 22, and his friend, young Filipino mother Risa Caramay, died in a crash in Litchfield National Park on June 26.
David Garwood, 22, who died on Thursday night, wasn’t wearing a seat belt when he was thrown from his vehicle after it rolled on Virginia Rd.
Mr Garwood was only months away from becoming a father and was set to rejoin his rugby league club, the Litchfield Bears, for his return game last night.
Acting Commander Joanne Foley and the NT Motor Accidents Compensation Commission launched a new series of ads this weekend.
She said Territorian drivers and passengers killed in road accidents were twice as likely to be not wearing a seatbelt as other Australians.
Commander Foley said 41 per cent of drivers and passengers killed in crashes in the Territory in the past 10 years were not wearing seat belts.
“Wearing a seat belt increases your chances of surviving a crash by up to 50 per cent,” she said. “The adver- tisements address common problems in urban, regional and remote areas of vehicle overcrowding, unrestrained children and people riding in the back of utes.”