Crash highlights ongoing importance of road safety

“We got the terrible knock on the door to say he (her son Jarrod) had been in a collision on the highway with a B-double petrol tanker,” she said.

“He had the collision on the corner of Goulburn Valley Hwy and Quinn St, Numurkah, and he didn’t stop at the stop sign.

“As long as we’d ever lived in Numurkah, the stop sign had been there, and for some reason, he just didn’t stop.

“From (the accident), he was airlifted straight to The Alfred hospital in Melbourne, as he was critical. He was in a coma for four months, and then he was just a body in a bed after that for three months.”

After 17 months of rehab, Jarrod’s accident had left him with a brain injury and severely limited in what he could do.

Ms Greening said Jarrod now had a “reasonable quality of life” for somebody who wasn’t expected to wake up.

“He had his collision three weeks after his 21st, so he’s been in the wheelchair now as long as he was out of one,” Ms Greening said.

“He’s better than what he was. For somebody that they told us would never wake up out of a coma, he’s doing extremely well.”

Road trauma and collisions affect not only people’s families, loved ones and the wider community, but also the first responders who show up at the scene.

Highway Patrol officer Senior Sergeant Emma Moloney said her colleagues were asking drivers to take care because the trauma they saw on the roads was “next level”.

“The hardest thing is turning up to people’s houses and delivering the news that their loved ones aren’t coming home that day,” she said.

“The impact on the members who have to keep attending these collisions is significant, and it takes its toll. Yes, there’s a job to do, but at the end of the day, they’re still human.

“We’re just asking people to plan their journeys, take their time and slow down. That’s one of the biggest things.

“If it’s going to take you five more minutes to get to where you’re going, you’re making sure that you get there rather than not at all.”

Mobile intensive care paramedic Brent Law said many people thought it would never happen to them, but didn’t think about how many people it would affect if it did.

“It impacts everyone. Everyone hears it on the news, they remember that it happened to someone’s family,” he said.

“It has a significant impact on all first-line responders when you turn up to those jobs,” he said.

Organisations such as the Amber Community aim to reduce the impact of road trauma and provide road incident support and education for the safety and wellbeing of road users.

Amber Community member Carmel Maher said getting people to listen to speakers with lived experience, such as Ms Greening, could bring to life what road trauma looked like and its lifetime impact.

“We ask people to identify their own beliefs about road safety, whether they’ve formed those beliefs over a period of time, or whether it’s become something that’s a little bit complacent,” she said.

“We’re getting them to identify what they actually think about not only road safety, but road trauma, because we believe it’s something that we should be talking about, and really, really aware of.

“Then we take them through the ripple effects of road trauma and how that affects not only people’s loved ones, but their workplaces, their sporting clubs and their communities as well.”

After what her family has been through, Ms Greening wants people to be aware that every time they get behind the wheel, their choices and behaviour can impact them and others for the rest of their lives.

“Make the right choices, so that it’s not going to have a ripple effect on you, and the rest of your family and everyone involved with you,” she said.

“When something goes wrong, it won't affect you for a day, a week or a month, it will affect you for a lifetime.”