THE state government has promised record levels of investment in road infrastructure and policing this year, labelling 2017 the year of action against road fatalities.
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The Calder Freeway between Bendigo and Keilor Park is one of 20 high-risk rural roads that have been identified as priorities for safety works this year under the Towards Zero action plan, which aims to cut roads deaths to less than 200 by 2020.
The installation of roadside and centre wire rope barriers along 330 kilometres of busy, 100km/h roads will continue, which the government expects will reduce run-off-road and head-on collisions by up to 85 per cent where in place.
But 10 people have already lost their lives on the state’s roads this year, three more than this time last year.
Eight of the deaths have occurred on country roads and two of them in central Victoria.
A woman in her 30s died in a crash at Kamarooka on Sunday, 48 hours after a collision claimed the life of a three-year-old girl at Cornella.
The woman was killed when the Toyota sedan she was travelling in on the Elmore-Raywood Road collided with a northbound Volkswagen sedan at the intersection with Bendigo-Tennyson Road about 4.50pm.
The female driver of the Toyota, aged in her 30s, and the driver of the Volkswagen, also a woman in her 30s, were taken to hospital with non-life threatening injuries.
The young girl died on Friday afternoon when the car she was travelling in hit a tree.
Under the five-year Towards Zero plan, there will also be more tactile centre and edge-lines installed on high-speed, medium-volume roads, to alert drivers when vehicles begin to drift out of their lanes.
It is a strategy Campaspe Shire mayor Adrian Weston thinks will have a positive impact.
“I think the rumble strips are certainly effective… it’s not difficult to be distracted,” Cr Weston said.
But it is education that he believes is the most important step.
The Towards Zero document includes a plan to boost local knowledge of the dangers of country roads to promote safer speeds.
“I think education has the greatest potential to have the biggest impact when it comes to reducing fatalities,” Cr Weston said.
Last year saw the number of lives lost on Victoria’s roads climb for a third consecutive year.