Father’s heartbreak leads to safer roads
Peter Frazer will never forget the day his 23-year-old daughter Sarah was killed by a truck on a Sydney highway, after she was stranded in the emergency lane with a broken down car.
Sarah’s untimely passing happened in 2012, and her father has since devoted his life to improving road safety across the country as president of the Safer Australian Roads and Highways group.
On Tuesday, Glenorchy’s Acting Mayor Sue Hickey announced a new partnership with SARAH to become a Yellow Ribbon Safety Council, with the aim of keeping the community safe on the roads.
The partnership was signed ahead of National Road Safety Week, which runs from May 5 to 12.
Ms Hickey said it would be especially poignant for the community following the tragic crash outside Cosgrove High School earlier this month.
“This partnership is just one of the ways council is demonstrating our support to those in our community affected by road tragedy,” Ms Hickey said.
“Council will become an advocate for SARAH’s harm elimination and minimisation strategy to Tasmanian road policy makers, working collaboratively with other road safety councils to ensure a co-ordinated approach across municipal borders. In the past 10 years, an average of 35 people a year have died on Tasmanian roads, and almost 280 people a year have been seriously injured.”
Mr Frazer said whether a road user was a driver, rider, cyclist, or pedestrian, safety had to become everyone’s highest priority.
“Twelve years ago, my own beautiful daughter, Sarah Frazer, was killed travelling down the Hume Freeway,” Mr Frazer said. “Her car broke down, but the road hadn’t been built to specification, and there was only 1.5m for the emergency lane. Unfortunately, a distracted truck driver hit both the tow truck, and Sarah.
“It changed my life, and now we run National Road Safety Week, and have created the yellow ribbon as the symbol of road safety across the nation.”
He said that in the time since Sarah died more than 14,000 people had lost their lives on Australia’s roads, with another 500,000 suffering serious injury.
“Everyone has the right to get home safely, and we can make a difference by changing the way that we drive. But it can also be done by changing the way we build our infrastructure, and the way we set up our speed limits.”