Drivers hell on wheels

IT’S 1.30pm Grand Final day — peak tourist season — and a car is hooning down a rural road near Colac at 150km/h.

Apart from the fact the driver is travelling a whopping 50km over the speed limit, in the back seat of this car is a five-year-old child. And the child is not wearing a seatbelt.

But for the interception of the Geelong highway patrol, we could very well be reporting on a road fatality. It doesn’t take Einstein to know that high speeds and passengers not wearing seatbelts — worse still a child — are a recipe for disaster.

And yet all too frequently this sort of reckless behaviour is occurring on our roads. In the past week alone we have seen a Singaporean tourist driving at 150km/h, a Hong Kong woman clocking up 131km/h and a Sydney visitor driving at 138km/h — all within 30 minutes on the Princes Highway near Modewarre.

Last week the police gave plenty of warning to motorists that their Operation Scoreboard would be out in force over the long weekend. But still they picked up a swag of people driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol over the weekend, including someone driving with a blood-alcohol content nearly three times over the legal limit.

At what point does common sense kick in?

The police are, unsurprisingly, concerned at this apparent lack of care on our roads. Given that much of the offending is being done by visitors to our region, we should all be worried that we, or a loved one, could become the next innocent victim of such reckless behaviour.

This increased danger during heavy tourist periods has prompted action from the State Government, including the installation of multilingual signage on the Great Ocean Road and VicRoads’ visitor driving safety initiative.

But at the end of the day the buck stops with each and every one of us. And it really shouldn’t have to take a police infringement, court date or — even worse — dead five-yearold child to persuade people to slow down or buckle up.