Queensland Police have conceded they are spending less time enforcing road safety than they did before the COVID pandemic, amid a rising number of traffic tragedies.
New figures provided to the ABC from police show they logged 478,143 road safety enforcement hours in 2024 — down 46 per cent from 890,728 hours in 2019.
The Queensland Police Service (QPS) has suggested a stretched frontline and "mission creep" are factors behind the fall in recorded enforcement hours.
[ENFORCEMENT HOURS GRAPH]As of last Sunday, the 2025 road toll stood at 257 — up from 249 at the same time last year and more than the 220 deaths for all of 2019, which was the lowest road toll on record.
Chief Superintendent Mark Wheeler told the ABC driver behaviour had changed since the pandemic, particularly with speeding and impaired driving.
"We certainly saw pressures during the pandemic. You would be aware that the QPS resources were at their limit," he said.
"We had checkpoints on borders. We were responsible for closing the border in fact, quarantine hotels. But that was about keeping COVID out of Queensland at that time.
"I think that there are generations of young road users and drivers who have never been intercepted. So, the worry about being intercepted is not there."
He indicated the reduction in road safety enforcement hours between 2019 and 2024 was due to a number of "converging factors".
Police say the accuracy of the enforcement data is dependent on officers completing internal logs and should be considered "indicative".
[ROAD TOLL]Chief Superintendent Wheeler said some of the reduction could be attributed to the way police record the information.
But he also pointed to the QPS's recent 100-day review, which found widespread fatigue, burnout, and psychological stress across the service.
"What the commissioner's 100-day review did lay bare was that our frontline is stretched," he said.
"I believe Commissioner [Steve] Gollschweski used the analogy, 'they are red lining'. And that's due to a number of factors.
"We've seen in that review mission creep, which is being diverted to jobs that are really not our jobs."
Calls for more RBTs
According to QPS, 2.139 million random breath tests were conducted in 2024-25, but that was still fewer than the 2.665 million tests done in 2018-19.
The volume of RBTs dropped significantly during COVID, but the overall number of drink driving offences each year stayed roughly the same over this period.
[RBT GRAPH]RACQ's head of public policy Michael Kane said the peak motoring body wanted police to do one test per licensed driver each year, which would equate to over 4.2 million tests.
"Random breath tests are not just a reminder that you don't drink and drive. They're also a reminder that the police are out there," Dr Kane said.
"So, they're a reminder not to speed, not to drive aggressively. It's a good way of community policing."
[DRINK DRIVING GRAPH]Peter Flanders, from the Motor Accident Insurance Commission and University of the Sunshine Coast road safety research collaboration, also backs one RBT per licensed driver each year.
"At the end of this year, if we're gold standard, we should have over four million RBT," he said.
"RBT is the absolute best road safety thing you can possibly do."
When asked about the proposal, Chief Superintendent Wheeler poured cold water on the idea.
"Simply looking at an output and giving an arbitrary number I don't believe is helpful," he said.
"It's about where you're doing the random breath tests or random drug tests. It's about being intelligence led, going to the areas that are creating the most trauma for us."
Chief Superintendent Wheeler said police had conducted about 400,000 more RBTs to date in the 2025 calendar year compared to 2024.
As of October 24, police had recorded 391,332 enforcement hours for 2025, putting the QPS on track to overtake the hours logged last year, but still well short of those in 2019.
Chief Superintendent Wheeler promised more officers on the roads in 2026.
"Since 2024, there has been a marked increase in our presence on the roads and our enforcement hours and we really intend to increase that," he said.
"Enforcement hours have decreased since the COVID pandemic, but we're trying to turn that around and really increase that presence."
COVID impact on road safety
Dr Kane said the state was in a road safety crisis, pointing to the rising fatalities since 2019.
He said there was a change in driver behaviour due to a lack of law enforcement.
"We think there's two main reasons for the rising number of fatalities on our roads," Dr Kane said.
"One is the burnout in police that happened through COVID and the lack of law enforcement that we're seeing on our roads.
"And related to that is the impact that has on lawlessness on our roads."
Mr Flanders believes there was a concerted effort on road safety between about 2013 and 2019, but the issue was no longer a priority once COVID hit.
He wants an "absolute concerted effort" over the next seven to 10 years to improve road safety outcomes, backed up by "very strong leadership".
"[The enforcement hours] have reduced, but that is because there has been, during COVID, significant other priorities and those priorities have actually continued somewhat," he said.
"To be honest, I would not like to be in a police leader's position at the moment trying to balance the calls for service, the other priorities, and road safety.
"But having said that, when something kills 300 people a year and puts 625 people per month in hospital, we can no longer in the road safety community simply continue to bob along with the tide."
Fall in speeding fines
According to data from the Queensland Revenue Office and Transport and Main Roads (TMR), the number of speeding fines issued to drivers has fallen in recent years.
In 2019, there were 1.05 million speeding infringements given out in Queensland, but by 2024 this had dropped to fewer than 800,000.
This includes fines issued by QPS, as well as by fixed, point-to-point and mobile speed cameras rolled out on the road network.
[SPEEDING FINES GRAPH]Dr Kane said one of the reasons for the reduction in fines was technology, such as mobile phones, warning motorists about upcoming speed cameras.
"We need to have a technology response to that and what we are seeing around the world is police move to more point-to-point speed cameras, where you can't avoid the cameras," he said.
Mr Flanders said there was more congestion on the roads because there were more drivers, which resulted in lower speeds.
"It increases crashes, but it reduces injuries and deaths," he said.
The number of speeding fines issued by the QPS, including the cameras it operates, fell from 135,251 in 2019 to 110,612 in 2024.
Chief Superintendent Wheeler said there was a "convergence of factors" behind the drop in fines, and that the reduction in enforcement hours was one of them.
"The figures themselves do not give an indication of all the outputs and all of the road safety activities we are conducting," he said.
"What we have been doing is being a lot more intelligence led and targeted as to where we conduct our operations.
"And sometimes the features of the road itself and the network means there will be less infringement notices issued."
