Perth is in the midst of its lowest road toll on record at the same time fatalities have spiked in regional Western Australia.

Seventy-eight people have died on country roads so far this year, nearly double the metropolitan toll of 42.

The tally includes eight people who were killed in regional areas on the WA Labour Day weekend in March.

Road safety commissioner Kim Papalia described the situation as a "tragic paradox".

"In Western Australia our issue is regional WA, and the risks that we've realised this year is the significant number of increased multiple fatality crashes," he said.

"That's where there is a number of people in a particular crash. We've had a terrible spike of those this year."

The figures are in stark contrast to August 2015, where the state's regional road toll was 54 while there had been 48 fatalities in Perth.

Mr Papalia said the higher regional toll was a trend that appeared to be reflected nationally.

Almost a quarter of the fatalities involved people not wearing seatbelts.

"Sadly, it's probably unsurprising that the Wheatbelt, the South West and the Great Southern continue to represent risk," Mr Papalia said.

"It's that area of distance from the metropolitan areas of about 250 kilometres."

Mr Papalia said the Road Safety Commission was examining all of the fatal crashes, but highlighted those where multiple people travelling in one vehicle died.

"We need to evaluate each of those, look for issues where we can try and improve the design and feed that back into manufacturers for safer vehicles," he said.

"For us it means we have to improve our campaigns.

"We need to really change the attitude of drivers, we need to promote better roads, we need to promote better vehicles on the road but we also need to look at better behaviours."

Perth's previous lowest road toll up to August 24 was in 2009, when there were 44 fatalities.

Meanwhile drivers have been urged to plan their trips ahead of next month's school holidays.