Alcohol badly affects your driving skills and concentration. Drivers detected with illegal levels of alcohol face serious consequences.

Illegal drugs cause changes in the brain that can impair your driving ability and increase your crash risk.

Mobile phones

Mobile phones can be a dangerous distraction. All licence holders should know the rules for how to use a mobile phone legally and safely.

Seatbelts

It is compulsory to wear seatbelts in NSW - they double the chance of surviving a crash and reduce the risk of injury.

Road rules

Our road rule animations have simple answers to common misunderstandings, including how to use roundabouts and when you're allowed a U-turn.

Fatigue

Fatigue-related crashes are almost three times as likely to be fatal than crashes not involving fatigue.

Speeding

Speeding is the single biggest killer on NSW roads, contributing to about 40% of fatalities each year.

Emergency vehicles

Slow down for stationary emergency vehicles with flashing blue/red lights, or tow trucks and other breakdown vehicles with yellow lights.

Distraction

Being distracted increases your risk of a crash. At 60 km/h if you are distracted for just two seconds, you travel 33 metres blind.

Demerit points

The demerit point system provides an incentive for drivers to improve their behaviour, obey road rules and comply with NSW traffic laws.

Speeding

Speed zones and speed management

Get the facts

Driving too fast is the single biggest contributor to death and injury on NSW roads. Each year, speeding contributes to about 42% of road fatalities and 25% of serious injuries. Almost 128 lives are lost and 1050 people are seriously injured each year.

Your speed decides the outcome

Speeding is never safe. Speed increases the risk of having a crash, as well as the severity of the crash.

Road users caught driving too fast will also face speeding penalties.

The faster you go the more:

time you need to react and avoid a crash
stopping distance is needed
severe the impact of a crash
chance of death or serious injury.

Stopping distances

The faster you go, the longer it takes to stop. A typical stopping distance when travelling at 30km/h on a reasonable road surface is 19 metres. At 40km/h, the stopping distance increases to 27 metres.

Even a small difference in your speed can greatly affect the likelihood of death or serious injury.

If you’re driving at 50km/h, it will take you about 37 metres to stop. At 60km/h, that distance jumps to 56 metres.

If a car hits a pedestrian at 50km/h

The impact is twice as likely to cause death than if the car had been travelling at 40km/h.

Other factors that affect stopping distances include:

distraction, fatigue or dim lighting, as drivers take longer to react
wet roads or worn tyres, which can lengthen braking distances.
poorly maintained brakes.

To reduce the risk of a crash, you should stay under the speed limit and drive to the conditions. Slow down in wet weather or when road conditions or visibility are poor.

Speeding and fatalities

In a crash between a car and a pedestrian, there's a 90% chance a pedestrian will survive if the car was travelling at 30km/h. There's a 60% chance if the car was travelling at 40km/h, and a 10% chance at 50km/h.

Chance of survival for a pedestrian hit by a car

In a side-impact crash with another vehicle, there's a 90% chance that a driver or passenger will survive at 50km/h. There's a 60% chance at 60km/h, and a 20% chance at 70km/h.

In a front-on crash between two vehicles, there's a 95% chance that a driver or passenger will survive at 60km/h. There's a 90% chance at 70km/h, and a 20% chance at 90km/h.