The loss of a loved one from a road crash is never more keenly felt than at times like Christmas.
The empty chair at the table, the silent room and the laughter lost will be experienced by hundreds of Australian families this festive season. Canberra's Tom McLuckie and his partner Sarah Payne will be among them.
On Friday, Tom McLuckie cautiously parked off to the side of the westbound lane on busy Hindmarsh Drive and took flowers to the crash site where his 20-year-old son, Matthew, was killed when driving home from work on May 19 this year.
The P-plate driver was doing 80km/h on the uphill climb on the dual carriageway when a stolen VW Golf, which police estimate was travelling at 177km/h, came over the rise on the wrong side of the road and ploughed into his Holden Astra.
The horrendous head-on impact of the high-speed crash pushed Matthew McLuckie's Astra 40 metres back down the road, broke almost every bone in his body and caused an instant, massive brain trauma. He died at the scene.
The unlicensed driver of the stolen Golf, 20-year-old Shakira Adams, suffered severe, life-threatening injuries. She has been hospitalised for months. This week she was summonsed to face court for manslaughter and culpable driving causing death.
In an instant, one young precious life was lost and another ruined forever.
Across Tom McLuckie's inner forearm is a tattoo, his first. Inscribed are the simple words: "What's done is done".
It's a quote from Macbeth which the father found written in a random piece of paper with his son's study notes from university.
"It's like he is telling us to try to find peace," Mr McLuckie said.
This Christmas will be the McLuckie family's first without their eldest son.
Heartbroken beyond measure, Tom McLuckie has issued a plea to all drivers to take extra care this holiday period so they never experience the awful loss he and his family have had to suffer.
"If there's one important message I can offer others from all that we've been through, it's for drivers to please just slow down," he said.
A similar message has been issued from police after the customary Christmas-New Year NSW and ACT double demerits period began, continuing until January 2.
The ACT's Detective Acting Superintendent Paul Hutcheson has asked that, leading into the holiday season, all road users consider the safety of themselves and those around them.
"The destination is the important part; we want everyone to get to their destination safely," he said.
Former president of the Australasian College and Road Safety and prominent Canberra-based road safety advocate, Lauchlan McIntosh, said more than "Groundhog Day" messages are needed to reduce road crash trauma this Christmas.
Mr McIntosh also said the full extent of road trauma remains hidden by a lack of reporting coordination between the states and territories.
"There is no reporting either daily or over Christmas the serious injuries from crashes, as we do not have up-to-date daily data despite that those numbers are at least 30 times that for [road-related] deaths," he said. "Injury trauma loads up our already overloaded trauma care services.
"Responsible [transport] ministers across the country have agreed we should have a reduction in road crash trauma by 50 per cent by 2030, and apparently agreed on an Action Plan for 2023-2025 but with no sign of a response to the 61 recommendations some nine months on. Why is this not urgent? Why is it too hard?"
Across the ACT, NSW and Victoria, the 2022 road toll has spiked. The ACT's road toll this year is 18, the highest in more than a decade. And in 70 per cent of the ACT incidents, the driver was found to be affected by drugs and/or alcohol.
"I do not think it would be remiss of me to say that it has been a horror year [on the roads] for Canberra," Chief Police Officer Neil Gaughan said.
Across the border, the 2022 NSW road toll sits at 265, 22 more than for the same period last year, with a significant increase in trauma on NSW country roads.
Victoria's road toll, too, is 30 higher than for the same period last year.
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