General News
15 April, 2025
The impacts of road trauma are far-reaching across the community, experts say
Recent analysis has found local people are dying on local roads while experts say understanding road trauma could help.
Local people are dying on local roads, recent statistics have found, as emergency responders try to start the conversation on the far-reaching impacts of road trauma.
According to a recent Transport Accident Commission (TAC) analysis, 70 percent of people killed on country roads from 2020 to 2024 died within a 30 kilometre radius of their home address.
“The evidence is clear — crashes often happen close to home, on familiar roads that we know like the back our hand,” TAC CEO Tracey Slatter said.
The data follows a tragic start to the year on Victoria’s roads. January was the deadliest month for the state since March 2008, and the worst start to a year since 2001.
According to Victoria Police, 84 people have died on the state’s roads so far this year.
The Goldfields PSA, which hasn’t had a fatal collision since 2023, saw a Dunolly man killed following a collision earlier this month.
His death is an unfortunate reminder of the impacts of road trauma on small communities.
Central Goldfields Highway Patrol Sergeant Paul Martin said road trauma’s net is far reaching.
“You’ve obviously got the people involved and their immediate family but it does extend much broader than that. Everybody, particularly in a rural community, probably at some point in their lives are affected by road trauma,” he said.
It’s a belief Jefferson Hoober, Maryborough IGA manager, is all too familiar with.
In August 2022 his best friend, colleague, and member of the Carisbrook Lions Club Ian Hoyland was killed in a collision while doing deliveries.
“He wasn’t just a guy that talked the talk, he actually got in and had a go,” he said.
Mr Hoober remembers Mr Hoyland as trying to help wherever he could. It wasn’t unlike him to be behind the controls of the club’s train.
“He would take that to every party or every community organisation around the town,” he said.
“They put smiles on kids’ faces.”
After the collision the community showed their support across the region, including from Bendigo and Ballarat.
“Even now we drive across the spot where Ian was killed ... and it hurts. You sort of acknowledge it as you drive through there and say ‘g’day Ian’,” he said.
While Mr Hoober might have “thick skin” his wife, whose son was also in the collision, continues to experience anxiety.
“Local people being killed on local roads, it hurts, it hurts the community and it takes a long time to get over,” Mr Hoober said.
Amber Community, a not-for-profit which provides road incident support and education, has been supporting those experiencing road trauma since 1994.
Their regional coordinator for Loddon Mallee, Natalie Stanway, hopes to help people understand road trauma’s broader impact through awareness seminars.
“It’s to give them the knowledge and the tools so that they can make safer choices and ... share that ability to make safer choices with their friendship groups, their family, their work colleagues,” she said.
“They’re the people who end up suffering the trauma as much as the person who’s injured.”
The seminars are facilitated by Ms Stanway alongside a person with the direct experience of road trauma and emergency services speakers.
“It is listening to the person with the lived experience of road trauma and the emergency responder that really connects with people, makes a difference and gives them a perspective that perhaps they had not previously had,” she said.
“You don’t have any appreciation of the impact of your actions on somebody else until you stop and consider it.”
As a volunteer emergency responder, Ms Stanway remembers a young girl who was distraught following a relatively minor collision.
“There was a young child involved in one of those vehicles and that child was absolutely distraught. To the point that we were trying to ascertain if they were injured more than what we could see because the level of upset was just out of proportion to what we’d been able to identify as the injuries,” she said.
“We found out they were actually on their way back from the funeral of a family member who had been killed in a crash. This child had made the association that if you are in a crash, you die.
“I will never forget that child because it really brought it home to me how we all see things through a very different lens. This child was waiting to die and to everybody else it was a fender bender.”
Emergency responders are also uniquely impacted by road trauma. While they rely on their training in the moment, CFA’s Goldfields Group Officer Peter Higgins has experienced first-hand how road trauma can stick with someone.
He was on the way to watch football when he came across a collision. He helped first responders with a man going through “death rattles” by slowing the bleeding with a towel.
But when he was back at work he couldn’t shake the memory. The trauma of it was still there with him.
“You know what it was? The company that was washing Ambulance Victoria’s towels was the same company that was washing the towels at the bakery. It was the smell of the towels, as simple as that,” he said.
Mr Higgins turned to his friends and mentor for help. He encourages other first responders, and the community, to do the same if they’re struggling with road trauma.
“There’s no good being a dead hero,” he said.
Ms Stanway encourages community members who are struggling with road trauma, no matter how they were involved, to contact Amber Community.
“It’s okay if you don’t do as well as you think you should do in a certain timeframe because we’re all individuals. If people feel they do need support, that this is something they’re not processing in the way they’d like to process, they should reach out for help,” she said.
Her hope is that locals will take the time to reflect on their own behaviours and what they can do differently to improve community safety.
“Having some knowledge of the impact of road trauma definitely gives you a different perspective on how you drive and the choices you make when you drive,” she said.
Sgt Martin agreed, believing if the impact of road trauma on community and emergency responders was better understood people would drive differently.
“I think the best chance of reducing road trauma is if everyone plays their part. That extends beyond just concentrating on your own needs to get from a to b,” he said.
“We would see a positive effect on road trauma, without a doubt.”
When Mr Hoyland died Mr Hoober saw an entire community grieve. Now, more than two years on, he wants the community to remember that.
“Everyone’s loved ones are out there, and you only get one shot at life. I think it’s very, very important that you respect other people’s lives [by driving safely],” Mr Hoober said.
“It rocks everyone, it effects everyone.”