Cop tells Coast drivers to cool it

The Gold Coast’s top traffic cop has appealed to drivers to exercise patience on the roads and avoid distractions amid a worrying rise in fatalities.

As of Monday this week there had been 101 deaths in crashes on Queensland roads – up from 82 at the same time last year.

Speaking to mark National Road Safety Week, Senior Sergeant Bradyn Murphy, who is officer in charge of Highway

Patrol on the Gold Coast, said drivers needed to remember that a split-second mistake could have devastating consequences.

“Within five seconds you can go from living to dying in a traffic crash because of a poor decision that you make in a motor vehicle,” he said.

Snr Sgt Murphy (pictured) said people who caused serious accidents also had to live with the knowledge of the trauma they caused others.

“(If it’s) taken the lives of people in your car or people in somebody else’s car, you can’t take that back. That’s gone. It’s a moment in time that’s lost.”

Snr Sgt Murphy said speeding and driver distraction were among the biggest problems encountered by police on Gold Coast roads, with people coming to grief because they were “glued to their phones”.

“We feel like we need to be connected the whole time,” he said. “But it’s dangerous because we’re not connected in other ways.

“When you’re driving a motor vehicle or motorcycle, the best connection you need is what’s happening around you. You take your eyes off the road for two seconds, even at 60km an hour you’ve travelled nearly 34m in two seconds.

“So that’s 34m you haven’t seen anything. That’s a frightening statistic.” Snr Sgt Murphy said police on the Gold Coast were constantly targeting dangerous behaviour on our roads including speeding, tailgating and mobile phone use while driving.

He said that beyond the high visibility speed check operations that were noticeable to most motorists, police were also using a number of covert methods to help keep the roads safe, with “no sympathy” being shown for errant drivers.

While a number of operations had taken place during National Road Safety Week, which continues until Sunday, Snr Sgt Murphy stressed police were actively targeting dangerous driving every week of the year. “Obviously every week should be Road Safety Week,” he said. “But we have this week in May, and another in August, to jog people’s memory about road safety.

“It’s (hopefully) just a prompt for someone to go, you know what, I’m just going to back off.”