Hearts out, pledges in for the lives lost on Riverina and regional roads

Drivers passing Wagga's Civic Centre on Wednesday morning would have seen cut out hearts stuck into the grass representing the 354 people who died on NSW roads last year.

More than two-thirds of those hearts, placed for National Road Safety Week, represented regional road fatalities.

"The percentage of people that are killed on regional roads is about two thirds of the road fatalities each year, which is far too high," Transport for NSW senior manager Joanne Cheshire said.

"That's something we do in the country, we travel distances for sport, for work, if everyone played their part, we could make a big impact."

The setup was for "Coffee with a Cop", raising community awareness about the impact of road trauma and encouraging the Wagga public to pledge to "drive so others survive".

More than 65,500 Australians have made the pledge, which includes pledging to "never use my mobile phone while driving" and never speeding, driving tired, or while under the influence.

The week is an initiative by Safer Australian Roads and Highways (SARAH), a road safety organisation with a tragic link to Wagga.

It was founded by Peter and Judy Frazer, the parents of road crash victim Sarah Frazer who was struck and killed by a truck when her car broke down on the Hume Highway on her way to university in Wagga in 2012.

"We often come across people who have similar stories to Sarah or have been personally impacted by people being involved in road crashes," Ms Cheshire said.

"It's really important for us because we've got the high speed roads and the longer distances, it's really important for people to take a break when they're travelling."

Coffee with a Cop was Wednesday's initiative outside the Civic Centre and the public were invited to visit the memorial hearts and speak with local transport officers and police officers about road safety.

"If everyone played their part, we could make a big impact."

To date, there have been 124 lives lost on Australian roads in 2024. At the same time last year, there were 109 lives lost.

Acting Inspector Ben Smith was at the Civic Centre initiative on Wednesday morning.

He said that road safety is about "education, not just enforcements".

"We [cops] are humans, we don't always ticket people, we give a lot of cautions," Acting Inspector Smith said.

"I'd rather give someone a good lecture on the side of the road and have them soak it in."

Wagga police are joined by metro police for highway patrols, and are still seeing an over representation of drug drivers in fatal collisions.

For the rest of the week, police will be speaking at schools to young drivers about mobile phones in cars, drug and alcohol driving, and other road safety issues.

Wagga joins other iconic regional locations like the Deni Ute Muster gates, and Goulburn's big merino, by lighting up the streets in yellow - the national road safety colour.