Six Dead on WA Roads: A Grim Start to School Holidays

Six lives were lost on West Australian roads from Thursday to Sunday, with five people dead within a horror 24 hours, prompting the state’s road safety commissioner to urge motorists to take more care at the start of the school holidays.

A single-car crash at the intersection of Patterson and Ward roads in East Rockingham on Sunday morning brought the state’s road toll to 104 for the year to date, and was the sixth fatal crash from Thursday to Sunday.

On Friday morning, a 51-year-old man died after being struck by a vehicle in Mundaring, shortly after a 40-year-old driver was killed when their sedan and a Mack truck towing three trailers collided in Mariginiup.

A third incident involved a car which hit a tree and caught fire in Serpentine, followed by the death of a 64-year-old woman who was the passenger in a Hyundai Kona that also struck a tree in Alfred Cove.

The fifth crash occurred in Australind, when a 70-year-old man riding a motorcycle died at the scene when the bike and a tow truck collided on Forrest Highway on Thursday afternoon.

“That’s five families grieving, five groups of friends, loved ones, work colleagues, all dealing with loss, all preventable deaths,” Road Safety Commissioner Adrian Warner said.

“It’s a reminder to everybody at the start of school holidays that we just need to take more care.”

Warner said it was “incredibly frustrating” to see the road toll climbing and said he hoped that the shock of five road deaths in 24 hours “might get a few people changing their behaviour”.

“If you look over the last few years, 15 fatalities on average in July. We’ve had five in one day,” he said.

“Sad as it is, and tragic as it is, this can be a wake-up call.

“It might be the prompt for people to just stop and think a bit more about the risks and their choices when they get behind the wheel of the car. That’s what we need to do. We don’t want that road toll to get higher.”

Commander Mike Peters of WA Police’s road policing command said factors including speed, driving to the conditions, wearing seatbelts and distraction all played a big part in most road fatalities.

“I just want to reiterate speed seat belts, fatigue, alcohol and drugs and distraction remain to be over-represented in all these crashes,” he said.

“I’m not talking about the five specifically, but road deaths to this point, are over-represented with those five factors.

“The West Australian police are out in force this weekend, like they are every weekend, but because of the school holidays, we have a heightened level of enforcement and I don’t apologise for our officers in booze buses, in camera operations, in our highway patrol, being out there and enforcing the law.

“And I just ask the community to do your part.”

So far there have been 104 road deaths in WA in 2025, compared to 2024 where there was a total of 93.

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