A 22-year-old man was airlifted to Canberra Hospital with serious head injuries after an accident on the Kings Highway yesterday afternoon.
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Police said the man was driving a ute when it hit a motorbike 10km north of Braidwood. The 52-year-old motorcyclist was also flown to Canberra Hospital with wrist and leg injuries.
The accident followed yet another fatality on NSW roads, with the state's Christmas holiday road toll climbing to 12 yesterday afternoon after a person was killed when their car smashed into a tree beside Tumbarumba Road near Ladysmith and burst into flames.
While ACT's holiday road toll remains at zero, NSW's has now surpassed last year's total and makes up almost half of the 30 holiday road deaths nationally.
NSW Police issued almost 12,000 notices for traffic offences during the first six days of their holiday blitz on motorists, one in which a P-plater was caught driving more than 45km/h over the speed limit without his P-plates on the Hume Highway in Goulburn on Wednesday night.
Police have also charged 276 motorists with drink-driving during Operation Safe Arrival; 103 fewer charges than the corresponding period last year. But police managed to catch 18 drink drivers and 809 speeding motorists and charge 1257people with other traffic offences in just 24 hours.
In Melbourne, a disturbing development has been an increasing tendency for brash hoons to taunt police to chase them, aware that officers must call off high-speed pursuits that endanger civilian lives.
Victorian Deputy Commissioner for Road Policing Kieran Walshe said drivers were increasingly exploiting the loophole that forced police to abandon some high-speed pursuits.
Police policy requires officers to radio a chase to a pursuit controller and pull out if it poses a risk to members of the public.
''We are seeing a number of occasions in recent times where offending drivers are baiting police to pursue them,'' Mr Walshe said.
''We had one particular incident in rural Victoria where the member has pursued, they determined it was unsafe, they abandoned the pursuit, they stopped their vehicle, the offending vehicle ... did a U-turn and came back, flashed his lights at them endeavouring to re-engage.
''To the member's credit, they didn't.''
Another brief police chase, which started when a man sped past an officer at double the speed limit, left an offender slamming his car into a funeral home in Melbourne's south-east yesterday. Police said the offender remained on the run after escaping capture. with AAP