By KATRINA BRANDON
VICTORIA Police are appealing to the public to be safer on roads and to seek information on how to make rural roads safer.
Police held a road safety and policing forum at Morwell RSL last month, which discussed incident and road fatality statistics, possible reasons why a collision has occurred, programs and projects that police have implemented, and ways the community can assist local law enforcement.
Local police including Divisional Area Commander Superintendent, Tracie McDonald; Operations Support Acting Superintendent, Stephen Cooper; Tasking and Co-ordination Inspector, Sonali Deshpande; Regional Road Policing Acting Inspector, Michael Cirksis, and Road Policing Advisor Acting Senior Sergent, Andrew Milbourne all spoke at the event.
“Tonight is about looking at the regional perspective of what is going on in your local government area,” Acting Inspector Cirksis said.
“We have a vision: zero deaths and zero incidents on our roads by 2050. We want to keep the community safe on our roads. It’s not just about road users. It’s about all systems in place.”
In the forum, the group reviewed data over five years, and found that incidents have been trending upward and are back to 2020 levels. The data also examined common themes within collisions, such as gender, age, experience and health.
On the road, Acting Inspector Cirksis said they had found males to be in more incidents than females because males were more likely to take more risks.
“Guys are killing themselves on the road. Males tend to take more risks than they should on the roads more so than females,” he stated.
The data was also skewed towards older drivers and those aged 18 to 35 were more likely to be in a collision.
The forum considered vulnerable road users who could be impacted, such as cyclists, pedestrians, and motorcyclists. Acting Inspector Cirksis said those users were a focus within the eastern regions.
The data, which is recorded at the scene and sent to TAC (Transport Accident Commission), is also filtered into areas, with some information, such as medical causes, filtered out of the data. The data is aimed towards road collisions caused by system and road failures.
There are many reasons why an incident may occur, such as inexperience (L and P platers), inappropriate and excessive speeds, distractions, failure to give way, not driving to conditions, fatigue and human error.
“Safe systems acknowledge that drivers make mistakes. There are physical limits to a person. Even with good vehicle safety, only so much can be done,” Acting Inspector Cirksis said.
He also said that 94 per cent of fatal collisions this year have been at fault of local drivers, and 96 per cent were local people who died or were seriously injured. Local drivers tend to be overconfident on the roads because they think they know the roads and where the police set up or have speed cameras.
When it comes to youth on the road, Senior Sergent Milbourne said that young people watch what their elders do.
When teaching a learner, most people tend to place young drivers in older vehicles as they are less likely to worry about small “dings” in the vehicle. Senior Sergent Milbourne said that placing young drivers in older cars is one factor that could be putting younger drivers at risk of fatal incidents, and that they should be driving newer, safer vehicles with higher safety ratings.
Other topics discussed during the forum included the safety of electric vehicles and the fact that scooters are a new addition to the roads, which has caused some incidents. Those at the forum also discussed how the community can help Victoria Police on the roads through platforms such as Eyewatch and Crimestoppers, residents can confidentially report road-related incidents such as hooning.
For more information, go to: police.vic.gov.au/road-safety
