With this in mind, an evening of powerful real-life stories designed to help young people make safer choices behind the wheel is being held at St Joseph’s College’s Oak Centre.
Families from across the Echuca region are encouraged to come along to the return of the free Cool Heads road safety program, on Wednesday, September 9, from 7pm to 9pm.
The session is aimed primarily at learner and probationary drivers aged 16 to 25.
Leading Senior Constable Shane Roberts said the two-hour session focused on the devastating consequences of poor decisions on the road and the lasting impact road trauma had on families, first responders and the wider community.
“The messaging is around road trauma and the types of incidents that police and first responders attend and deal with, and how the actions and your decisions behind the wheel greatly impact on those type of scenes that we attend,” he said.
The program addresses the major contributing factors in serious crashes, including speed, fatigue, mobile phone distraction, drugs and alcohol.
“They’re the main ones that we see quite often, and the common theme with all of those contributing factors is that they’re totally preventable,” Leading Sen Constable Roberts said.
The evening begins with a presentation from Detective Sergeant Stephen Hill, of Victoria Police’s Major Collision Investigation Unit, who has more than 20 years’ experience investigating serious and fatal crashes.
He will share real examples of collisions, explain the contributing factors and outline the police investigation and court processes that follow.
Local emergency services, including Echuca Moama Search and Rescue or the SES, will also speak about attending traumatic crash scenes and the challenges of rescuing victims from vehicles.
The program also features guest speakers with lived experience, giving attendees an insight into how a single road collision can have lifelong consequences.
“The guest speakers talk about that massive ripple effect that we see in our communities with even just one of these instances on our local roads,” Leading Sen Constable Roberts said.
While the initiative is targeted at young drivers, parents are also encouraged to attend.
“A lot of the feedback we got from parents in the last two years is that it actually made them reconsider some of their driving habits as well,” he said.
Leading Sen Constable Roberts said police would always prefer to prevent road trauma than respond to it.
“Police can do the enforcement, the fines and sending people to court, but we would much rather deliver proactive preventive programs to try and address the issues that we see, so we don’t have to attend these serious and fatal collisions,” he said.
He said the program also highlighted an important statistic that many young drivers may not realise.
“As a learner, they’re statistically the safest drivers on the road,” he said.
“Once learners become licensed on their probationary licence, they actually become the least safe drivers on the road.
“We want young people to understand that just because you no longer have a supervising driver sitting next to you, we want you to drive safely and get to your destination safely with everyone else that’s in the car.”
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