“I’m not sure if the community have got a little bit of wilful blindness when we start talking about the road toll and the fatalities that we’ve had,” said Victoria Police Inspector Dave Bowler
“We’ve lost six lives due to fatal collisions. And I said recently if we’d had six murders, the community would be up in arms and we’ve had six lives lost on our roads.
“We should be up in arms about that because they’re all preventable.”
NSW Chief Inspector Paul Huggett agreed, saying that driving safety goes beyond just the driver.
“It’s incumbent on every person in the vehicle to make sure that there are safe driver practices. Your life is in my hands. If I’m texting you should be challenging that behaviour,” he said.
“If I’m speeding, if I’m fatigued, you should be challenging that behaviour because your life is in my hand. It’s not incumbent on just the driver, it’s on everyone in the vehicle.”
In November the government released data that said more than 1200 people had died on the roads in the past 12 months with 107 deaths occurring that month.
Chief Inspector Huggett also reminded people to think about their home safety systems.
“Make sure your neighbour or somebody is available to check on your property. Consider getting timers for lights to get the appearance of somebody at home matter,” he said.
“Whether you advertise on Facebook about your trip away or you talk about it down the street. You are essentially putting a sign out the front of your house saying the house is going to be vacant for two weeks.”
If you are staying home then it’s a good time to reach out to the people near you and to make sure they are also okay.
“This time of the year is a hard time for people, and it’s even harder this year with the fiscal environment we’re in. So there’s a lot of people that are doing it tough,” Inspector Bowler said.
“Check in on your friends, your neighbours and your loved ones. Make sure they’re okay and be kind to each other. Sounds silly, but I think that’s really important that we look after one another.
“We get a lot of visitors to this area and rightly so because it’s a beautiful place. We all know it’s beautiful, we live here, but please be patient with one another. Please be respectful of the area that we have because everyone’s worked really hard to make Echuca-Moama a beautiful place.”
7°C