Deputy Commissioners and Assistant Commissioners from around Australia have gathered in the city to look at current road trauma trends, road users most at risk, and what adjustments can be applied to road policing models in response to this year's significantly higher road death toll.

There have been 161 fatalities on Victorian roads in 2019 - 57 more than at the same time last year.

Eighteen of those deaths have been on central Victorian roads.

Leading Senior Constable Pat Allan from the Bendigo Highway Patrol said an increase in resources would be welcomed.

Read more: Bendigo safety forum announced as deaths on road soar

"The battle is always to have enough police cars - and highway patrol cars in particular - on the road," he said. "We could always do with more but we do have police on the road that tend to focus on Bendigo.

"A lot of our work comes from there because it is a concentrated population but we've got a huge area from Elmore, down to Heathcote, to Wedderburn and across.

"There are all of those hundreds of kilometres of road as well and we're limited with the number of patrol cars."

Leading Senior Constable Allan said many of the major highways and roads are unable to be patrolled as consistently as police would like.

"They say that if someone has seen a police car while driving, it has an affect on their behaviour for a certain amount of time," he said.

"If we don't have the resources to have more cars out on the road, people might do the whole trip from here to Mildura and not see a police car.

"So people take a bit of chance, chances are they won't be caught, and there are those extra risks."

The forum in Melbourne will also cover how other jurisdictions have effectively reduced road trauma and discuss how they can be applied in states like Victoria.

While drug and drink driving remains a problem on central Victorian roads, Senior Constable Allan said driver distraction also needed to be acknowledged.

"Most collisions, as far as I would say, are from a person's lapse of concentration for that several seconds," he said.

"Some are from people who are drunk or affected by drugs or driving 150 km/h, but most are caused by something that you wouldn't consider criminally negligent.

"People just need to take that extra bit of time - take that second look at what is coming because it could be the difference between getting where you're going and dying.

"It's as simple as that."

The state government will host a road safety forum in Bendigo in September where members of the public can contribute their own ideas on how to reduce the road death toll.

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