Victoria tops holiday road tolls
January 3, 2009 by Paul Maric
Victoria has set a new record today, certainly not one worth bragging about.
As of midnight this morning, Victoria recorded the highest number of fatalities across the nation. Victoria recorded 16 deaths on its roads, one short of last year.
All together though the nation’s road toll has increased by six to 56, up from 50 this time last year.
Assistant Commissioner John Lay has said, “Despite our high visibility enforcement campaign, the educational campaign by TAC, the legislative changes by the government and the improvements to our roads we are still reliant on the public playing their part and changing their behaviour.”
Suggestions that double demerit points are to be applied across the nation during the holiday period have also been suggested by Commissioner Lay, who said he would suggest it to parliament once it returns.
The Northern Territory has also shown a devastating trend with the road toll increasing by at least 15 deaths since last year and some 30 since speed limits were introduced. The alarming correlation between speed limit introductions and road deaths points to the obvious that speed limits are affecting drivers.
Commissioner Lay is right in suggesting drivers have to do their bit. We would like to hear your opinion though, what is the best way to curb this tragic yearly trend? Speed cameras are obviously not detering the public, so what is the solution?
Print it: 
Wat the solution is, is better driver education and training as well as regular testing so everyone knows the road rules and doesn’t just learn them for there p’s tests then throw them out the window.
Go VICTORIA, We win in everything there is compensation. Great at sport, Great city and people and great at rapping cars around trees or finding other cars and people to crash in. GO VICTORIA.
I think the solution is to move away from ‘one size fits all’ policing – let there be some allowance for driver experience / track record and car capability in the enforcement of speed limits, but come down super-hard on the young ‘know-it-all’ brigade. I say that in the full knowledge that a few decades ago I was one of them (and probably lucky to live long enough to have descendants).
Also, from what I’ve seen of Australian country roads, having gum trees encroaching on the carriageway doesn’t help.
Of course, slapping double demerits will not fix the solution.What a knee jerk reaction from this Layman.
During holidays you have all these families that have never driven anywhere for 12 month, except 25kms per day to work, driving to NSW or right across all states. Inexperience, busy roads, inattention and simply huge numbers of cars on the roads will result in accidents.
Research shows that the holiday road toll is actually the same as for the rest of the year, when compared with the number of kilometers travelled or the number of cars on the road.
Solution:
Better roads, better education and less alcohol consumption the night before the driving. More resting for the inexperienced long distance drivers will also do the trick.
I’d be very interested to see some more information on these 16 Victorian deaths. How did they happen? What were the conditions like? How many cars were involved? Were the drivers drunk? Some real facts please?
I can’t fathom how hard it must be to lose a loved one in a car crash but I can’t imagine it helps if those loved ones just become government statistics. Every time I hear about an accident on the news the report almost always ends with, “…Police believe speed and alcohol are to blame….”
There’s more to these crashes than just speed and/or alcohol, although the TAC would have us believe otherwise. Clearly not everyone who is speeding is crashing their car. And clearly catching more people speeding over the holiday period hasn’t stopped these tragedies. How is double demerit’s going to help?
Brett – you are spot on the mark mate.
Let us see some real evidence for all these evidence. Clearly the speed will always be a factor in any accident since speed of travel is why we all have cars. If they travel at 0km/h they would be utterly useless.
Soem small research I was able to do points that at least 3 accidents involved young drivers, and I know several pedestrians were also involved.
So
A) How is the double demerits do anything to prevent drunk pedestrians stopping in front fo cars, or bikes – Tullamarine accident with a killed motorcyclist involved a pedestrian stepping in the road in front of him, causing him to crash.
B)young drivers need training – giving them licences after pathetic parents teached them how to drive through suburban street is clearly not adequate.
“Improvements to our roads” ??? In what God’s name way and where !!!Commissioner Lay ???
The Northern Territory toll is a strange one considering the introduction of speed limits.
The Victorian Government,it’s advisors,Commissioner Lay and the Vic TAC can surely come up with the “best” solution.
I mean look at Commissioner Lay,he suggested double demerit points during the holiday season-yep,that going to work for SURE!Actually why not attach electrodes to people’s sensitive body parts and give them a bit of a shock if they have been caught doing 5Km/h over the posted speed limit.
Well don’t the people who took the open speed limit away from NT looks like dumbasses now haha, more deaths now there is a speed limit! Let’s see if they are smart enough to take it away, I doubt that.
Im not expert, but I agree full with Brett. Simply not enough information other than ‘16′. Its pretty meaningless. We need to know location, age, all other factors involved. Look at those factors for all the deaths and address them.
By suggesting double demerit points, it seems the authorities are missing the point. Based on the idiocy I see on an almost daily basis on our roads, speed cameras etc do not deter people. If a driver doesn’t have the brains to realise that their actions are risking their own and others lives, how can you expect the same person to be worried they might end up with a big fine? The problem is all attitude and arrogance and is simply a reflection of society today. Too many think they are above the law and feel the need to express it by showing it in their driving attitudes.
Spot on Superoo!
Upgraing our roads will help, though we will never have roads as good as europe as we have to small a population for such a vast expansion of roadway (less $tax/person/kilometer of road). We need a mix of Germany’s driver education and our own. In Germany you can only learn to drive with instuctors, which is good in theory. Since (in general) you driving gets better with experience, you will keep having to fork out money to instuctors to learn. There needs to be a set level divers need to get to before parents (who have also been taught how to teach their leaner) take them out.
For the reason for the higher NT crashes, it could be that some are obeying the new speed limits, while others arn’t and getting frustrated and making a stupid move to overtake.
it doesnt matter what is done to stop fatalities on our roads because people are stupid. It is drummed into people about drink driving and they still do that in huge numbers. I see at least 10 people per day on their mobile phones, eating, doing make-up, having coffee, smoking, brushing hair while driving because they think they will get away with it forever. The only way to stop road fatalities is to take all the cars of the road……….nothing else will work because people are basically stupid.
YEh i thought thay had the strictest speed laws and look what happens.Dosent matter what thay do people will always make mistakes simple as that its human nature.All the speed cameras are just a way of taxing us more.
Maybe its time they just realize that this is the lowest it can get. There will always be accidents or people wanting to kill themselves via car crash and no matter how much training, upgrades, rules, penalties, ect there will always be x number of death per year.
Considering There were 137,900 deaths registered in Australia in 2007 – only 1604 where killed on the road.
The seven priority areas that cause death in OZ are arthritis and musculoskeletal conditions, asthma, cancer control, cardiovascular health, diabetes mellitus, injury prevention and control, and mental health. In 2006, deaths associated with the seven National Health Priority Areas accounted for 77.4% of all underlying causes of death and were either associated with or the underlying cause of 90.8% of deaths.
So forget spending billions on roads, ads, more police, radar cameras ect and spend it on building some more god damn hospitals and medical research so we can save 120 000 people and not just 1 600 from road deaths.
I’m a bit surprised Victoria got the gong, I mean Victorian roads are a fair bit better than NSW roads, and NSW has a bigger population. Nothing will stop these levels of fatalities each year except for actual attitude change in all drivers, not 99% of drivers, all drivers. I don’t even think better roads would help, they’d be nice, but most accidents happen because people spear off the road from lack of attention or fatigue or losing control. Having less things to run into would reduce the number of fatalities, but with such a huge road network, i doubt the government would ever attempt it. I mean look how long its taking to make the Hume highway dual carriageway.
Only when *everyone* starts concentrating 100% when they drive, and actually realise they are controlling a 1 – 2 tonne potential weapon and not just sitting in the lounge room, then we might reduce accidents a meaningful amount.
Given the number of drink driving and no seat belt convictions in NT, I reckon minimising the amount of time they’re on the road would greatly reduce their road toll. Give em unlimited speed limits everywhere i reckon, less time to kill themselves and others, pack of maniacs.
Why is this site becoming a general news site???
I see enough of these sort of articles plastered all over the news, i dont come here to read about it.
I gritted my teeth at the last couple that were posted, but now another one???
Get back to the car reviews……(please)
CA,
Apparently the Viva has been dropped from Holdens lineup.
How about a story on that rather than multiple off topic “horror road toll” articles………
Its called Car Advice.com.au not Car Reviews.com.au
They need more speed cameras!!!
Broken record, driver training!
speed camera wont stop drink driving, incompetent drivers and idiots from taking the wheel.
my call for driver education, better roads, signs and alcohol free zone!
This may have something to do with road enforcement rules that only allow a small window of 4km/h causing drivers to look down at their speedometer so often they can’t concentrate on the road.
Road rules should be targetted at dangerous driving, not the inavertant overspeeding of a few kms per hour on a straight peice of road somewhere purely to raise revenue.
Driver education and rational and flexible laws should be the foundation of victorian road safety. Police and the VicRoads should be targeting ‘hoon’ behaviour and dangerous driving by severly punishing exessive speeding in built up areas and during busy freeway times. On the other hand they can be flexible to drivers that may have gone over the posted limited by a few kms.
A sensible apporach (rather than a revenue focused approach) may help reduce this trangic number in the future… my 2 cents.
My guess those inceased numbers in NT could be a result of the speed limits, but basing statistics on just two years is a bit short sigted. Given time folk will get used to travelling slower, then won’t be so dependant on “watching the speedo” and not paying attention.
Doubling merit points is just sooo short sighted, what a foolish statement to make. Guess it menes the marginals will be forced off the road, lose their jobs then claim the social benefits to become a burden on society. Good thinking Eh!