Police make plea to curb state’s road toll

By Max Stainkamph

Apr 30, 2023

Tragedy: A fatal collision last week involved two cars and a truck in Strathmerton. Photo by Rechelle Zammit

Emergency service workers are at their wits’ end as Victoria’s road toll keeps spiralling, with this year’s tally up nearly a third on the tally by the end of April 2022.

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Speaking a day after Victoria’s worst crash in more than a decade at Strathmerton, Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner of road policing Glenn Weir was emotional discussing the effect it was having on police and their colleagues who dealt with road trauma.

The crash, which happened on April 20 on the Murray Valley Hwy, left five people dead after a car drove through a give-way sign, pushing a ute in the path of an oncoming milk tanker.

Speaking to the media, Asst Comm Weir said the scene was incredibly confronting for emergency service workers.

“I’ve seen the vision from the truck. It’s horrific. It’s catastrophic. It’s the result of a simple collision which cost five lives,” he said.

He said road trauma had been “quite significant” across the state, but the north-east had been hit particularly hard with a quadruple fatality at Pine Lodge earlier this year.

Fatal crashes have also been recorded at Katandra, Lancaster, Kialla, plus multiple deaths on the Hume Hwy at Creightons Creek and Tallarook.

Two deaths were also recorded in the region on New Year’s Eve.

“When all the tape’s taken down and the cars are towed away and people will move on, it’s quite easy for that to be that thing that happened last week or last month and let it stop at that,” Asst Comm Weir said.

“It’s disturbing to us that despite all our efforts we still can’t arrest the growing trend of trauma.

“We’ve had a lot of operations where we’ve surged resources into regional areas and people need to take responsibility, because we can’t be everywhere holding your hand all the time.”