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EMERGENCY services are lamenting the number of crashes that have occurred on our roads in recent weeks.
Bendigo’s SES volunteers have responded to 14 rescues in 17 days, the majority of them the result of crashes.
Local police officers have been called to 13 crashes that caused injury.
The most recent was an incident at Huntly on Thursday night that resulted in serious injuries for some of the occupants.
One woman was trapped in the wreckage for half an hour after the car slammed into a tree on the Midland Highway.
Bendigo SES deputy controller Natalie Stanway said she would not describe the number of recent rescues as a spike, but said it was unusually high.
“It is a lot in a short space of time,” Ms Stanway said.
Sergeant Mick McCrann also said it was too early to say there had been a spike in crashes, but Bendigo Highway Patrol was monitoring the incidents to target problematic locations and times.
Sergeant McCrann said speed was often a factor in crashes, as were alcohol, distraction and fatigue.
He urged people to drive to conditions and allow for rain, fog, low light or water on the road.
Ms Stanway echoed the reminder and said that while there were usually a number of factors at play, the recent crashes suggested there were some instances where people had failed to allow for the conditions.
She said this included not only environmental conditions, but also “personal conditions”, such as fatigue, distraction, and drugs and alcohol.
Drivers should carefully consider every action they made in a vehicle, Ms Stanway said, including whether they were in a suitable state to begin driving at all.
With the darker days of winter approaching, Ms Stanway said one simple thing drivers could do to improve safety on the roads was to turn on their headlights.
She said that even if a driver could see the road well, this action would make their vehicle more visible to other drivers – possibly the difference between making it home safely, and tragedy.
Ms Stanway thanked not only those who responded to crashes in a professional capacity, but bystanders who did what they could to help, saying they did an “amazing job”.
This year, 86 people have been killed on the state’s roads.
Twelve people died in crashes during a 13-day police operation that ended on Tuesday. Close to 950 offences were committed on the region’s roads during the blitz.