The first sign something was wrong was when the power in Eve Langham's Southern Highlands home went out. The second was a neighbour coming over to say there had been a bad car crash down the road.
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"I felt pretty sick, I don't know why," Mrs Langham says.
Mrs Langham tried to call her 15 year-old daughter Erin, who was out with her friends, but the phone kept ringing out.
Erin had been killed instantly when the car she was travelling in hit a telegraph pole, sending the neighbourhood into a blackout. The driver, a P-plater, and another passenger were also killed, while two other passengers sustained brain injuries.
Mrs Langham's life changed "literally in a split second".
"One day we were running around, taking our daughter to ballet lessons [and] her year 10 formal was coming up. The next minute, there's nothing."
Mrs Langham has become a road safety educator and is frustrated and distressed that 15 years after Erin's death, the road toll remains high and has even recently increased.
Last year, 1300 people died in road accidents across Australia, representing a 7.9 per cent jump on 2015. While this is far below the 3000-plus deaths a year in the pre-seatbelt and breath-testing days, it was the worst toll for five years and flies in the face of Australia's target to reduce the number of deaths on the road to about 1000 by 2020. In 2016, 37,000 Australians were also seriously injured in road crashes, which as Liverpool Hospital trauma surgeon John Crozier grimly notes, is equivalent to the population of towns such as Dubbo or Warrnambool.
Dr Crozier is on call this weekend and is not expecting much of an Easter holiday.
"Every day, surgeons in Australia see the results of the carnage on our roads," he says, having already operated on a pedestrian suffering broken bones, a flayed thigh and torn arteries earlier this week.
Infrastructure and Transport Minister Darren Chester, who has lost cousins and school friends to road accidents, is alarmed by the recent increase and says the numbers "demand a national response".
"I fear we have become complacent to some extent about the number of deaths and serious injuries on our roads," he told Fairfax Media.
He is not the only one worried. The Australasian College of Road Safety, backed by the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, recently sent a 30-page report to federal MPs, pleading for help. ACRS president Lauchlan McIntosh says that while recent upgrades to the Pacific, Hume and Bruce Highways have saved lives, more action is needed.
Mr McIntosh advocates a mix of measures, including ensuring all new vehicles have the latest safety technology, individual behaviour change, and better co-ordination between federal, state and local governments. The College of Road Safety is also calling for a Productivity Commission inquiry into the economic burden of road trauma. It is estimated road trauma costs about $32 billion a year, due to the expense of emergency services, long hospital stays, rehabilitation, long-term unemployment, welfare payments and full-time care.
James Thompson is still living with the consequences of zipping through an orange light on his motorbike in 2002. The resulting crash with an oncoming car saw him hospitalised for three months with multiple brain bleeds, a ruptured eye, punctured lung, broken teeth, shoulder and collar bones and life-threatening damage to his spinal column.
"It was me being young and stupid," he says.
Today, the Melburnian father-of-two still needs rehabilitation, has lost sight in one eye and has restricted use of his left arm due to nerve damage. He had to quit his apprenticeship as a fitter and turner, while his medical bills have added up to about $1 million.
Most of the time he can hide his injuries but some things are not an option. "I can't throw my kids in the air."
Mr Chester, who holds the eastern Victorian electorate of Gippsland, says there needs to be a "renewed focus" on driver behaviour, particularly regarding mobile phone distraction and speeding in regional areas. In 2015, more than two thirds of road deaths occurred on regional and remote roads.
"It's not a problem we can leave to police, we all have to accept responsibility for our actions on the roads."
But the Transport Minister downplayed calls for a national inquiry into what had caused the rise in deaths.
"I don't think we need a broad inquiry but I do believe there's merit on specific research on new and emerging [factors]."
Mr Chester has recently held meetings with state transport ministers and police chiefs on the road toll, but would not speculate on what the upcoming federal budget may hold for road safety.
But Labor senator Alex Gallacher, who is co-chair of the parliamentary friends of road safety group, is frustrated about a lack of momentum on the road toll.
Acknowledging the federal government is only one of many players with responsibility for road safety, he says there are some "easy and simple" changes - such as mandating autonomous emergency braking and lane keeping assist technology in all new imported vehicles - which could reduce fatalities.
"We just don't see the political will at the federal level," he says. "It needs a champion."
Ahead of the Easter break, Eve Langham says people don't appreciate how deadly the road can be.
"You've lost someone on the road and someone goes speeding past you - people don't seem to realise the law applies to every one of us."
Meanwhile, Mrs Langham and her family continue to live with the consequences of the crash that killed Erin.
"I thought that she'd get married and I'd have grandchildren."
