The figures from the NSW government’s Centre for Road Safety reveal that a disturbing 11 per cent of road fatalities involved a driver or motorcyclist who had illicit drugs in their system.

While most drug driving offences were on metropolitan roads, most fatal crashes involving a drug driver (78 per cent) were on country roads.

A total of 166 people have died in 146 drug driving fatal crashes in NSW in the four year period from 2010 to 2013.

Of these, seven fatal crashes occurred in the central west region, which recorded one of the lowest figures for fatalities.

However, the central west recorded the second highest rate of total drug driving offences per 10,000 licence holders with a total of 11.1 per cent.

This is well above the state average of 7.9 per cent of total drug driving offences.

The highest in the state is the far western region with 18.8 per cent.

Local State Member for Dubbo Troy Grant says these figures are disturbing.

“Data like this has never been collated before in the state’s history and marks an important step in tackling the use of drugs while driving,” he said.

“Living in regional NSW we know that road accidents are all too common from fatigue, dangerous driving to illicit drugs including cannabis, speed or ecstasy.

“We will be ramping up our fight to get this behaviour off our roads to save the lives of innocent motorists.”

Mr Grant said police are now using a new and improved drug testing machine, the Drager DrugTest 5000.

“The machine has more sensitive detection thresholds and will reduce the proportion of drivers who are screened as negative at the roadside,” he said.

These devices are paid for directly from mobile, red light and speed cameras.

Sergeant Dee Jeffree, Lachlan Local Area Command Highway Patrol said the new drug testing machine is only in Sydney and there is currently not much police out here can do to test for drugs.

“We can do tongue swipes or detect it based on observation – if they do a negative breath test we can take them to the hospital if we believe they are under the influence of something else,” she said.

“But we’ve got to be really sure.

“If they test positive then we have to deal with the drink driving offence first.”

Sgt Jeffree said they have been approved for funding for a bus that has the drug test machine in it; however that would be based in Dubbo.

“We’ve put in an expression to have them come here,” she said. “It’s a matter of really cracking down on it.”