Reducing road trauma a focus of strategy

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A target of zero deaths on council roads by 2050 has been set out in Baw Baw Shire’s draft road safety strategy.

It follows 357 people being seriously injured and 19 lives lost on shire roads between 2015 and 2019.

The draft strategy is currently open community feedback until 5pm on Friday.

An officer report said council gained TAC funding to update its existing road safety strategy in early 2022.

Safe Systems Solutions was engaged to provide the review and action plan to identify key issues.

The report said council was committed to the Victorian Road Safety Strategy which set a target to halve road deaths and reduce serious injuries by 2030.

“This strategy has been developed to help council achieve the ultimate target of zero deaths and serious injuries on council roads by 2050,” it said.

The draft strategy incorporates engineering data for local crashes, looks at road safety best practice from around the world, and workings with road safety experts.

Cr Peter Kostos said he hoped to gain community feedback as data contained in the report was four years out of date.

Cr Kostos said it was understandable the highest concentration of pedestrian crashes occurred in Warragul and Drouin, noting population and road usage.

However, he found it interesting fatal and serious injury crashes were most likely to occur in areas of high volume traffic with conflict points or where significant movement of vehicles was close to pedestrians and cyclists.

“The state government would have us believe that the largest percentage of accidents in Victoria occur on country roads,” he said. “This doesn’t actually say that.”

“We might be in the country for argument’s sake, but it’s not saying it’s happening on country roads.”

Cr Kostos believed this contradiction and lowering of speed limits on country roads was “partly because they can’t fix the roads”.

Cr Keith Cook said 357 seriously injured and 19 lives lost was far too many.

“It’s good to see serious accidents are reducing in Baw Baw Shire over that five year period,” Cr Cook said.

“However, police, ambos and firefighters know how serious every accident is. It leaves lasting effects on the people involved as well as their family and friends.

“The target should be no deaths, no serious injuries, no accidents,” he said.

Cr Cook said the hot spot areas were populated areas of Drouin and Warragul as well as recreation areas such as Rawson and Neerim East.

“Please be courteous and safe on our roads,” he pleaded.

Cr Michael Leaney said there needed to be a point where people stopped talking and provided feedback to this strategy.

But, Cr Leaney emphasised “we can’t engineer our way out of this”.

“You actually need to have people who are the users of the roads, whether they be drivers, riders, pedestrians or other users, to make sure that they play their part in making sure the roads are safe,” he said.

Cr Leaney said the report showed many people involved in motorcycle accidents in the shire were visitors.

As a paramedic, Cr Annemarie McCabe said “I attend too much road trauma”.

“So any and all actions to improve safety are vital,” Cr McCabe said.

Cr McCabe said a new funding program had been announced to help improve council-managed roads.

“It’s great news...and I hope they will look at community feedback and put some funding this way to help us improve road safety,” she said.

To view the draft strategy, submit a short online survey or learn more, visit bawbawshire.co/DraftRoadSafetyStrategy