Lockdowns across the borders and getting low on our own mask juices makes for duller numbers blobbing through the Christmas to New Year break as the national road toll tallies up to 29 across Australia.
Once more on the top of the country and again on the chart, Queensland holds out with the top with nine (9). Darting back and forth around the borders between the states is not the kind of high flying as it seems even those on their backs looking skyward take it too easy, and find themselves off the road and on the tally. One such case being where a “27-year-old Caboolture man was lying on the roadway when he was struck by a passing vehicle.”
Victoria goes near even from their outing last year, this round only dipping down to six (6) and staking the second spot. Skirting mostly around the edges of the state, all the chalks are rural and mostly running it off the road, though not entirely off the charts.
Spanning two weeks on the open wide for their festive period of Operation Safe Holidays, South Australia will only get a five (5) count for those that fall in the rough as guts period as the other states. All wheels great and spoked include a 75-year-old bicyclist falling off their bike and pocketing that one from the side to claim the bronze and a wreath of Sturt's Desert Pea.
Operation Safe Arrival takes New South Wales into fourth place with four (4) over the line getting to the other side. You can't outrun a virus no matter how fast the car hurls you. And so fewer people even bothered testing out the theory of physical distancing six feet underground between life and death. “Compared to this time last year, we saw four fewer fatalities on our roads and only 691 motor vehicle collisions, down 205 from 896 last year,” NSW Minister for Police and Emergency Services, David Elliott said.
Flinging far out west toward Western Australia it was all hit and runs all week long. Even then the state is only putting two (2) in what body bags sit around.
Not to say events are staged, but over in the Northern Territory their lone one (1) is where a car “struck a man who was positioned on the road in the north-bound lane”. If there was a way to seed the chart positions, that's one slow way to go about it.
Down on the chin hair with Operation Crossroads, Tasmania got an extra two days (21 December 2020 to 1 January 2021) but show up no better and no worse than NT with one (1) as well. Not for not trying though, counting at least “9 serious injury crashes on our roads.”
Last again with no discernible reason to be in the country's capital, ACT was once again another zero for the period.
Making use of the most reasonable excuse not to see one another, the COVID-19 Coronavirus keepaway game is what tempers the embers. There goes another season of travel restrictions pinning the count between 00:00 24 December 2020 and 23:59 3 January 2021. Mayhap with mishaps we'll see next year best again to glimmer the likes of a year's gone by. Or even not so much with running people lying down on the ground.
Written on Monday, 18 January 2021