General News
20 February, 2023
Drivers urged to be safe, 2023 one of the worst starts to a year for rural road deaths police say
Local police have described a surging road toll as the “worst start to a year” in a long time, issuing an urgent warning to regional motorists to drive with care, with fatalities taking a significant toll on local communities. So far this year...
Local police have described a surging road toll as the “worst start to a year” in a long time, issuing an urgent warning to regional motorists to drive with care, with fatalities taking a significant toll on local communities.
So far this year there have been 51 lives lost on the state’s roads, up almost 30 percent from the 40 lives lost at the same time last year and well above the five-year average of 35, with 32 of the lives lost as a result of serious collisions occurring on rural roads.
Police suspect driver error, resulting from distraction and inattention, has contributed significantly to rural road fatalities so far this year.
Late last month, a 30-year-old Dunolly woman tragically lost her life following a two-vehicle collision at the intersection of the Bendigo-Maryborough Road and the Bridgewater-Maldon Road.
It’s understood the woman failed to give way at the intersection and sadly died at the scene.
The Bendigo Highway Patrol’s — which covers the Central Goldfields Shire — Senior Sergeant Ian Brooks said this year is already one of the worst he’s seen in terms of road trauma.
“This is the worst start to a year I’ve seen in many years and I’ve been doing this for a while,” he said.
“Fatalities have an ongoing effect right across communities all over central Victoria and we’re unfortunately seeing it far too often.
“It’s not just the family of the person involved in the collision that now suffer that trauma and grieving, it’s their friends, local sporting club and work as well — the cost of that loss of life to the community is exorbitantly high.
“This problem is only going to go away if we’re all contributing to it, everyone has to play their part in driving the road toll back down to what is ultimately going to be zero.”
Sen Sgt Brooks said there are a number of factors that contribute to serious and fatal collisions, noting complacency was among them.
“We’re finding that with speed and also seatbelts, complacency is creeping in quite a lot now,” he said.
“We’re detecting a lot of people who are not wearing their seatbelts and the number of people getting killed or seriously injured in collisions as a result of that is phenomenally high.
“Last year we had 19 fatalities in our highway patrol area which incorporates parts of Northern Victoria and eight of those people were not wearing seatbelts.
“In my experience, those eight people would have survived those collisions but because they chose not to wear a seatbelt, they died.”
Police are determined to avoid a repeat of this concerning road trauma trend, with highway patrol deployments bolstered in regional areas this month in the lead up to a state-wide operation over the upcoming Labour Day long weekend in March.
Sen Sgt Brooks reiterated the importance of driving to the conditions and remaining alert on the road.
“As country people we spend a lot of time driving on roads that don’t have safety barriers and other infrastructure we see in metropolitan areas,” he said.
“The best thing we can do as drivers is be aware of the conditions and drive to those conditions.
“Getting your driver’s licence doesn’t mean you’re all of a sudden the best driver in the world and if you’ve been driving for 40 years, it still doesn’t make you the best driver — if the conditions change, you have to change.”