PARENTS, YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW OUR LOSS

LUKE Robinson’s family is reminded of a life cut short every day.

And now his father is joining the call for an end to careless driving and the scourge of unnecessary young deaths on our roads.

Luke, a Bannockburn boy, was 19 when the Commodore he was driving slammed into a pole in Lovely Banks about 12.30am on a March night in 2010. The car was travelling about 160km/h before the impact.

Parents Norm and Leanne, and younger brother Jai, have been left to deal with the tragic loss of such a young life on the roads — a pain that still rears its ugly head eight years later.

“I suppose it’s what could have been, and just that going from a family of four to a family of three is quite difficult on, not just the parents, but also the children as well,” Mr Robinson said yesterday.

“There’s something that’s around every day that brings back all the memories as well, just driving in a car or whatever. “It never goes away.” With the revelation Geelong is ranked as the third worst area in the state for road fatalities of people under 25, Mr Robinson has laid down the challenge to parents to alter their driving habits well before their children get their yellow L-plates.

“Parents have got to lead by example when they’re driving with their young kids in the car,” he said. “Because we actually have an impact on our kids a long time before we start teaching them how to drive — they see what we do and how we react as parents. “For example, saying speed cameras are just ‘revenue raisers’ — if we keep on saying that, the kids are going to have the mentality that they’re not there to catch you from breaking the law, they’re just there to make money. “And when parents use mobile phones while driving, the kids are going to do that straight away, too. “I think parents have a lot more that they should do a long time before they start teaching them to drive.”