Tuesday, 14 November 2023

Road safety

Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (17:27): (587) My adjournment is for the Minister for Roads and Road Safety and concerns safety on Victorian roads, including both driver behaviour and the current standard of roads and the lack of road maintenance. The action that I seek is for the minister to ensure the government increase road safety messages in the media and community and for the minister to immediately invest additional funds to ensure the adequate maintenance of regional roads.

This year Victoria has recorded the highest number of lives lost on our roads in the past 15 years, and while we all know the state of Victoria’s roads is disgraceful, it is not just the state of the roads that has led to this devastation. Many people have commented to me that they believe driver behaviour has severely declined in recent years or, as they more specifically point out, post COVID, and I find myself having to agree. With such a large electorate I spend a lot of time on the road, and I am continually surprised by the amount of cars that cruise past me even though I am travelling at the maximum speed. I am also often appalled to see cars speeding and weaving in and out of vehicles on the ring-road and freeways that I travel on.

Earlier this year five lives were lost in a single-vehicle accident at the intersection of Labuan Road and the Murray Valley Highway in Yarroweyah. Yet despite all the publicity about the dangers of this intersection and Moira shire reducing the speed limit on Labuan Road to 80 kilometres per hour, just last week it was reported that the police had pulled over a driver doing 169 kilometres per hour on Labuan Road near the same intersection. That is more than twice the speed limit.

To 12 November, 258 lives have been lost on Victorian roads this year; 153 of those lives, or 59 per cent of all deaths, have been lost on rural roads. Alarmingly, in my electorate we have seen 18 lives lost in just four accidents alone – five at Yarroweyah, five at Daylesford, four in Chiltern and four at Piries near Mansfield. As I have been reflecting on this issue over the past week, it occurred to me that I had not seen a single road safety advertisement on the TV for some time. So I went to the TAC to look at their current campaigns, and I had not seen a single one of them. I am not sure whether the government has stopped or reduced TAC ads – but if it has, it is a mistake – or the ads they are running are not effective. Many previous campaigns have been confronting but also obviously effective, and safety on the road is not something that we can tippy-toe around.

Safety on the roads also requires our road network to be safe, and it is well documented that regional roads have deteriorated and that they are not being adequately maintained. This is another area the government must invest in to ensure the number of lives lost on country roads does not increase even more. Road maintenance is the first step to ensuring that Victorians have safe roads to drive on, but as many communities that have suffered tragic losses will tell you, this is not enough alone. Safer driving campaigns are essential to safety on our roads.