The Victorian Government has released a new road-safety strategy, Towards Zero, aimed at reducing the state’s road toll … and it is focussing a lot of attention on the country roads used by grey nomads.
It plans to establish ‘safer travel speeds’ on some rural roads, and it will also upgrade 20 major high-risk roads. The Age newspaper reports that flexible roadside and centre-line barriers, rumble strips and reflective guide posts will be installed on more than 2500 kilometres of country roads. Wider centre lines will also be installed on some rural roads to better separate oncoming traffic.
“There is an extensive network of narrow, lower quality, high-speed roads spread across rural Victoria that provide vital local connections and help rural economies thrive,” the Towards Zero strategy said. “But for every 100-kilometre stretch of this type of road, three people will die or be seriously injured every year.”
Some $340 million will also be invested to upgrade 20 high-risk roads, that will include the Hume Highway between Thomastown and Wodonga, the Calder Freeway between Bendigo and Keilor Park, and the Geelong-Bacchus Marsh Road.
In the past five years, 42 people have died on these three roads alone, while another 358 have been seriously injured.
A VicRoads spokeswoman said there would be ‘no blanket speed reductions’ rolled out by the road authority’s officers as part of the Towards Zero strategy.
“What they will be doing is sitting down and targeting roads that have a poor safety record,” she told the Age. “It will be done on a case-by-case basis.”
Last year, a total of 252 people died on Victorian roads, and the government wants to reduce deaths on the state’s roads to below 200 within four years.
I would have thought, seriously, that a higher Police presence would be a better option.
I have noted over my 50+ years as a driver that when a police car or motorcycle is seen traffic magically appears to slow down ???
Yes, and the Murray Valley Highway which stretches right across the north of the state to S.A. is an absolute disgrace. It carries a phenomenal amount of heavy vehicles including hundreds of caravans most days of the week. Vic Roads wriggle out of taking too much responsibility as the Murray Valley highway is not a classified as a “primary” road. Utterly diabolical.