In 2017 the Fatality Free Friday message reach a record number of Australians. With hundreds of thousands of Australian road users pledging their support of Fatality Free Friday. Six states and territories logged zero deaths on May 26th, but sadly, Queensland and Tasmania recorded two single-fatality road incidents.

Fridays remain one of the deadliest on Australian roads, in fact in 2016 just 2 of the 53 Fridays were fatality free – Friday, 5 February and Friday, 24 June.

On Fatality Free Friday last year, road crashes claimed the lives of four people, and seven were killed on the day in 2015.


Australian Road Safety Foundation founder and CEO Russell White said despite the downward trend in fatalities, his heart was with the families of Friday’s road crash victims during this terrible time.

“Two people went about their business as usual but sadly never made it home to their families,” he said.

“It is this tragic loss of the life that is the reason we advocate for safer roads 365 days of the year.”

Fatality Free Friday calls on road users to make a personal commitment to making smarter decisions on the roads – decisions that are often the difference between life and death.

Mr White said it was the hope of the Foundation that if people committed to driving safely on Fatality Free Friday, they would do so the next day and ultimately change their behaviour entirely.

“Through the Fatality Free Friday initiative, our road safety message has reached millions of Australians, with more than 220,000 committing their support by taking the pledge,”

“One death on the roads, on any day of the year, is one too many so if those pledges help save even just one life, it’s worth a world of a difference for the family,” Mr White said.

“As a proudly Australian company, Caltex places CARE first amongst our values, and this extends to our nation’s motorists, many of whom are our customers,” said Karen Bozic, Caltex’s acting Executive General Manager, Retail and Convenience. “We hope that by helping to raise awareness of road safety, we can help prevent tragic loss of lives that unfortunately occurs on our roads far too often.”

Held annually on the last Friday in May, Fatality Free Friday is the nation’s largest community-based road safety initiative.

For all media enquiries please contact:

Frances Browne on 0431 296 499 or [email protected] or Simona Varga on 0422 597 506 or [email protected]

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