Canberra recorded its lowest year on record for road fatalities according to new data, although more than two-thirds of drivers reported speeding in the past six months.
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The Productivity Commission's latest report on government services shows that nine ACT residents died on Australian roads in 2017, the lowest number since records began in 1988.
At that time, the death toll was 43, with a rate of 158 road deaths per million people.
That rate has substantially reduced over the last 30 years, to 21.9 in 2017.
This data is different to the ACT Policing's official road toll, which counts how many people died on territory roads only. ACT Policing's toll also excludes suicides.
The official ACT road toll for 2017 was five.
But while fewer people are dying on roads, many are still crashing.
Data collated from ACT Fire and Rescue showed firefighters carried out 590 road crash rescues in 2017-18, and performed 176 extractions from vehicles.
The number of road crash callouts is slightly lower than previous years, but well above the 451 crashes firefighters were called to a decade ago. They also only performed 80 extrications in 2008-9.
Separate data gathered from ACT Policing showed there was 614 hospitalisations in 2016-17 due to traffic accidents, down from 651 in 2015-16.
However the ACT's rate of traffic accident hospitalisations per 100,000 was higher than the national rate, at 208. The rate across Australia was 205 per 100,000.
The ACT had fallen from 226 per 100,000 in 2015-16 but still put the ACT as the fourth worst in country after the Northern Territory (462 per 100,000), Queensland (220 per 100,000) and Victoria (211 per 100,000).
ACT Road Safety Minister Shane Rattenbury was concerned about the number.
“This shows we can’t always focus on the road toll and must talk about the impact of all crashes on our community," Mr Rattenbury said.
“All crashes, fatalities and serious injury, are preventable. Road safety is everyone’s responsibility and when we’re on the road we must be alert and aware of the driving conditions and think about the person travelling in front, behind or next to us - they, like you, just want to get home safely.”
The ACT also did not fare well when it came to drivers drinking and speeding.
In 2017-18, 67.3 per cent of respondents reported driving at least 10 kilometres over the speed limit in the past six months (with a with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 per cent).
That figure was 64.9 per cent when the Productivity Commission began collecting that data five years ago.
And while the number of drivers admitting to driving under the influence has fallen from 9.7 per cent in 2012-13, 8.3 per cent of drivers today still admitted to getting behind the wheel while potentially over the legal limit, beaten only by the Northern Territory, Western Australia and South Australia. That figure had a margin of error of 1.4 per cent.
ACT residents were the best in the nation at buckling up though, with 96 per cent saying they wore a seatbelt every trip (with a margin of error of plus or minus 1.3 per cent). The Northern Territory was the worst, with 92.1 per cent wearing a seatbelt for every trip (plus or minus 1.8 per cent).
Clarification: An earlier version described the Productivity Commission figures as the ACT road toll. The Productivity Commission records all deaths of ACT residents, whether or not they occurred on ACT roads, and includes suicides. As a result, the road deaths data in this story don't match the officials ACT police roll toll.
