The state’s Christmas road toll hit 17 on New Year’s Day, with four fatalities in the Northern Rivers.
A middle-aged couple were killed when their car crashed into a guard rail at South Tweed Heads on Christmas Day and a five-year-old girl died in hospital following a car accident at Broadwater on Boxing Day. A 21-year-old man died in a single-car accident in Mullumbimby in the early hours of New Year’s Eve.
About 1.20am on Christmas Day a white Nissan Pintara was travelling south on the Pacific Highway, South Tweed Heads, when it left the roadway, crossed both lanes and crashed into a steel-and-concrete pillar of the Greenway Drive overpass.
The 49-year-old male driver suffered severe injuries and died at the scene. The 50-year-old female passenger was taken to Tweed Heads Hospital, where she later died.
A five-year-old girl suffered critical head injuries after being thrown from a Holden Barina when it left the Pacific Highway near Broadwater and hit a tree shortly before 3pm on 26 December.
She was taken to Lismore Base Hospital where she died early next morning.
The driver of the car, a 49-year-old woman from Melton in Victoria, escaped injury, while an eight-year-old boy, also from Melton, escaped with minor injuries.
A 21-year-old man was killed when the car he was driving crashed into a fence in Mullumbimby at about 12.45am on Saturday 31 December. The Queensland-registered Holden Commodore was travelling in a northerly direction on Left Bank Road, when the driver lost control on a sweeping right hand bend.
The vehicle left the road before colliding with a steel-and-wooden fence and then travelled a further distance before coming to a stop in a nearby paddock.
