Victorian Road Toll - 2023 Worst year for road deaths since 2008

[prydey]

It's a national rule. If the speed is above 80 you must keep left unless overtaking on a multi leave road. No sign required.

[Trevor 57]

Not disputing that

[tbro4123]

Originally Posted by ToryMikey

Could any of this be down to the absolutely horrendous state of Victorian country roads? And how things are *still* not fixed after the October 2022 flooding?

Victorian country roads are and have been a disgrace for years and have cost lives due to poor or non-existence maintenance, a bane on Victorian county bus and coach operators.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoOU5vYvLOU


https://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-03-...-crash/2637348


Terry

[FoxtrotGolfXray 5.0]

Originally Posted by Trevor 57

I can't remember there being mention of a speed limited area when I responded to the post. I could be wrong on that point, but I doubt it

I'm not sure what you mean, Trev?

If you mean that jgmdat didn't mention anything about keeping left in a speed restricted area, then that is true, they didn't.

Originally Posted by jgmdat

Do any of the driving instructors teach keep left unless overtaking? That could eliminate a decent amount of the issues on the road.

Hence, providing the full legalities would be a better response than just providing part of it based around an assumed scenario.

Your response was misleading, at best.

BTW, don't show my original post to franko, it might upset his belief that I don't know the 'keep left' rules

[mad2]

Originally Posted by prydey

It's a national rule. If the speed is above 80 you must keep left unless overtaking on a multi leave road. No sign required.

which is why i find it as annoying as that a majority of drivers will sit in the righthand lane. i also do not agree with the trucks being stopped from using the righthand lane - to overtake.


keep left unless overtaking.

[Franco Cozzo]

Originally Posted by mad2

which is why i find it as annoying as that a majority of drivers will sit in the righthand lane. i also do not agree with the trucks being stopped from using the righthand lane - to overtake.


keep left unless overtaking.

Heading down to Geelong its a pain in the ***, you can't be in the right lane in a truck and you either get on the air horn or flash lights when you have cruise set to 97 and everyone is sitting in the middle going 85-90 and you keep catching them - shouldn't be catching people in the middle lane on the freeway in a semi with a 36 tonne excavator on the back of it on cruise control

If you could use the right lane you could just move around them and back in.

[kevino]

Originally Posted by Franco Cozzo

Heading down to Geelong its a pain in the ***, you can't be in the right lane in a truck and you either get on the air horn or flash lights when you have cruise set to 97 and everyone is sitting in the middle going 85-90 and you keep catching them - shouldn't be catching people in the middle lane on the freeway in a semi with a 36 tonne excavator on the back of it on cruise control

If you could use the right lane you could just move around them and back in.

Um..,,,
Hasn’t it got active cruise control
A newish Volvo does

[russellw]

Originally Posted by Trevor 57

I can't remember there being mention of a speed limited area when I responded to the post. I could be wrong on that point, but I doubt it

Accept it Trev - you are wrong on this one. The keep left rule applies on all multi lane roads with a posted limit over 80 km/h in Victoria.

The age question requires a bit of deeper research. For the decade ending in 2022 there were 9,504 road fatalities nationally and the percentages across the various defined age groups are fairly similar with 20.4% between 17-25; 22.3% between 26-39 and 31.3% in the 40-64 age group BUT the first age group only covers 9 years while the other two cover 15 years.

Likewise, those figures contain pedestrian and cyclist deaths so if we exclude those, the percentages become 23.5%, 25.7% and 36% respectively but then taper off to 10.6% in the 65-74 age group (only 10 years) and 14.6% for 75+.

Let's take those who aren't in control out of the figures and just look at drivers and motorcycle riders then the percentages change to 28% (17-25); 30.7% (26-39); 42.9% (40-64); 12.7% (65-74) and 17.4% for 75+.

However, none of that takes into account the age distribution of the population to arrive at a real incident rate. Thus:

17-24 age group makes up 10.2% of the population and 28% of the fatalities;
26-39 age group makes up 18.9% of the population and 30.7% of the fatalities;
40-64 age group makes up 28.6% of the population and 42.9% of the fatalities;
65-74 age group makes up 8.7% of the population and 12.7% of the fatalities;
75+ age group makes up 7.1% of the population and 17.4% of the fatalities.

The fatality rate per 100k for all road user types is in the graph below. Please note that I used the median population numbers for the decade:



.. the highest rate is amongst the 75+ age group with the 17-25 age group next highest and 40-49 the lowest.

[Franco Cozzo]

Originally Posted by kevino

Um..,,,
Hasn’t it got active cruise control
A newish Volvo does

Thats not the root cause of the problem,

The problem is people not keeping left if they want to go slow, shouldn't need to be slowing down for slow pokes in front - customer wants their excavator at a certain time, you lose 10 minutes here and there on every job and suddenly you've lost $2000 in income for the day because you've lost a few jobs just on time losses.

We did a test on a 450km run regional on fuel economy saving doing 85-90 vs 100, and we saved like $40 in fuel across the run but lost around 45 mins in time which cost a $770 job.

Look into productivity losses through road congestion, its an eye-opener, if you can enforce keep left and it saves time on commutes well thats a pretty cheap fix.

[Franco Cozzo]

Originally Posted by russellw

Accept it Trev - you are wrong on this one. The keep left rule applies on all multi lane roads with a posted limit over 80 km/h in Victoria.

The age question requires a bit of deeper research. For the decade ending in 2022 there were 9,504 road fatalities nationally and the percentages across the various defined age groups are fairly similar with 20.4% between 17-25; 22.3% between 26-39 and 31.3% in the 40-64 age group BUT the first age group only covers 9 years while the other two cover 15 years.

Likewise, those figures contain pedestrian and cyclist deaths so if we exclude those, the percentages become 23.5%, 25.7% and 36% respectively but then taper off to 10.6% in the 65-74 age group (only 10 years) and 14.6% for 75+.

Let's take those who aren't in control out of the figures and just look at drivers and motorcycle riders then the percentages change to 28% (17-25); 30.7% (26-39); 42.9% (40-64); 12.7% (65-74) and 17.4% for 75+.

However, none of that takes into account the age distribution of the population to arrive at a real incident rate. Thus:

17-24 age group makes up 10.2% of the population and 28% of the fatalities;
26-39 age group makes up 18.9% of the population and 30.7% of the fatalities;
40-64 age group makes up 28.6% of the population and 42.9% of the fatalities;
65-74 age group makes up 8.7% of the population and 12.7% of the fatalities;
75+ age group makes up 7.1% of the population and 17.4% of the fatalities.

The fatality rate per 100k for all road user types is in the graph below. Please note that I used the median population numbers for the decade:

image

.. the highest rate is amongst the 75+ age group with the 17-25 age group next highest and 40-49 the lowest.

Out of curiosity, is there data on fatalities of motorcycle riders and whose fault it is in accidents?

[russellw]

Looking at the 2021 National statistics, it's still disappointing to see that of the 1,123 deaths, 732 of them 65.1% (732) were the result of an operator failing a blood alcohol test - a percentage that has been fairly consistent over the last decade but then 11.4% were also the result of at least one operator being unlicensed and 19.8% weren't wearing a seat belt.

[Franco Cozzo]

Originally Posted by russellw

Looking at the 2021 National statistics, it's still disappointing to see that of the 1,123 deaths, 732 of them 65.1% (732) were the result of an operator failing a blood alcohol test - a percentage that has been fairly consistent over the last decade but then 11.4% were also the result of at least one operator being unlicensed and 19.8% weren't wearing a seat belt.

TAC is running a new campaign about not having any drinks while driving, its been all over the roads and on TV.

Does it have further information about the age of driver fatalities in drink driving and not wearing seat belts?

[russellw]

Originally Posted by Franco Cozzo

Out of curiosity, is there data on fatalities of motorcycle riders and whose fault it is in accidents?

There was some in depth research done by Austroads a few years back using data from 2012-2014. It's a long report that looked at MC accidents rather than fatalities but here are the highlights:
45% involved riders 16-25, 35% 30-49 and 24% 50+;
86% were in metropolitan areas;
33% were on major arterial roads but only 7% on free-ways;
49% occurred at intersections;
45% occurred in 60km/h zones and only 6% in 100 km/h+;
61% were a collision involving another vehicle while 39% only involved the motorcycle;
90% of riders held full licences;
36% of incidents were 'fail to see' incidents including some where the motorcyclist was the cause;
35% of incidents were caused by the rider failing to negotiate a bend or corner;
13% were caused by the rider not stopping in time; and
13% were caused by rider lane changing manoeuvrers.

[Itsme]

Originally Posted by Franco Cozzo

VIC Magistrates also frown upon the 18-25 year old male cohort when they come through court on driving convictions.

There was a few of us going through together on driving offences, me with the highest score on the board

The guy who got done for 29 over got torn a new ******* by the magistrate, who was quite nice to me, solely because of his age falling in that 18-25 cohort, what he did was tame AF.

Road he got done on used to be 100, was recently reduced to 80km/h, he got done at 109 at around 1AM - super tame offence, he lawyered up, was dressed nice.

Magistrate tore him a new rectum, she went off her head about young men killing everyone else on the roads and speed being the biggest killer

The local drug dealer got treated way better than the kid on the 29 over in the 80 zone.

I got the rough end of the pineapple by the second magistrate when I had to get in the witness box when it came time to apply for my licence again.

Franco I can relate to your comment, many years ago I had the fortune of accompanying school children excursion to Melbourne magistrate courts, what you stated rings true, speeding driving offences were treated harshly compared to other criminal acts, I was gob smacked how our judicial system worked.

[Franco Cozzo]

Originally Posted by Itsme

Franco I can relate to your comment, many years ago I had the fortune of accompanying school children excursion to Melbourne magistrate courts, what you stated rings true, speeding driving offences were treated harshly compared to other criminal acts, I was gob smacked how our judicial system worked.

Its all a bit of a laugh, the newer legislation has harsher punishment than the older stuff. its usually knee-jerk political responses to an issue that grabbed media attention and got the public talking, hoon laws and their extension are a good recent example, or Victoria and its criminalisation of traffic offences, they hand out criminal records in VIC like lollies.

Things like family/domestic violence offences, drug dealing, assaults et al where there's no mandatory minimums and there's a lot of room for lawyers to work their magic, one of the cases that was up when I was going through was family violence offender who beat the snot out of his ex wife who had an AVO out against him, and he got less than all of us on various driving offences. He had a massive history of alcohol abuse and family violence, all his siblings had AVOs out on him, one of the things he did on this massive rampage was called up his brother then threatened to eat the family dog, gets into fights with police, beats the crap out of the ex missus

He had this young looking kid with curly red hair in a blue suit representing him and he had the magistrate wrapped around his finger, it was amazing.

If anyone is bored go sit in on your local magistrates court one day when they're sitting and just observe what happens, the public can sit in and watch.

We had 53 of us going through on the same day in a small regional court, and it was things like me and the hoons, family violence offenders, drug dealer, disputes between ex wife and new wife over school pickup nastiness and all sorts of things.

I wouldn't have minded working with local police and having to do the knock or attend fatal accidents/hospitals and that sort of thing, would probably have more of an effect on my attitude than just taking my licence off me for 13 months and spending about $4000 all up in fees/fines et al.

[roKWiz]

and I thought Victoria was bad.

[jgmdat]

Originally Posted by FoxtrotGolfXray 5.0

I'm not sure what you mean, Trev?

If you mean that jgmdat didn't mention anything about keeping left in a speed restricted area, then that is true, they didn't.



Hence, providing the full legalities would be a better response than just providing part of it based around an assumed scenario.

Your response was misleading, at best.

BTW, don't show my original post to franko, it might upset his belief that I don't know the 'keep left' rules

What is misleading about asking a question?

[FairmontGS]

Originally Posted by roKWiz

and I thought Victoria was bad.

image

Not called The Gold Standard State for nuffink...

I don't get these road tolls. I've racked up big kms this year comparatively and I just drive normally, soberly and safely. I've faced a couple of dangerous situations that I've been able to brake out of or drive away from as a result. I don't understand how people end up dying in such numbers.

[Franco Cozzo]

Originally Posted by FairmontGS

Not called The Gold Standard State for nuffink...

I don't get these road tolls. I've racked up big kms this year comparatively and I just drive normally, soberly and safely. I've faced a couple of dangerous situations that I've been able to brake out of or drive away from as a result. I don't understand how people end up dying in such numbers.

Seems to be regional areas that take the cake in VIC, can understand when you have stupid **** like big trees on the side of the road, throw in some roos, drink driving and no seat belts you've got a recipe for dead alcoholics.

My idea is **** them all off, then council buys some land and makes an 'Australian native' nature park as a trade-off for removing all the trees from the side of the roads. Put in cycle paths everywhere between towns, link them to the nature parks.



Why have those trees right next to the highway? **** them all off, bike/walking track and Australian native nature park, everyone wins.

Maybe there's something more in it, why do we have so many drink drivers? Why are there so many people who aren't wearing seatbelts? I've got a well documented history of being a dead set moron and even I always wear seat belts.

I've always averaged around 30,000km/year just commuting to and from work, and majority of my trip is on country highways and yet here I am, still alive to annoy everyone

[DJM83]

Originally Posted by FairmontGS

Not called The Gold Standard State for nuffink...

I don't get these road tolls. I've racked up big kms this year comparatively and I just drive normally, soberly and safely. I've faced a couple of dangerous situations that I've been able to brake out of or drive away from as a result. I don't understand how people end up dying in such numbers.

Couldnt agree more. Not driven heaps but dont drive like a flog/under the influence and be safe. And you wont have issues.

[Franco Cozzo]

Also in 12 months it was about 1200 deaths on our roads nationally, out of 26 million people - whens the point where you just accept 1200 deaths across the whole country is perfectly acceptable?

COVID killed 3375 Australians between Jan - Sep last year and you don't even rate a mention on the news on that one, but 1200 people die on the roads and we make a huge song and dance over it.

Why the difference in how we treat people dying in our community? Why is the one that happens in the car more important than the ones who die from a disease?

[roKWiz]

Originally Posted by FairmontGS

Not called The Gold Standard State for nuffink...

I don't get these road tolls. I don't understand how people end up dying in such numbers.

Me neither.

[Sprintey]

Originally Posted by Itsme

Have you ever noticed how learner drivers are being taught these days by idiotic instructors, one more reason for increased road tolls.
More police presence will certainly help reduce it.

There's a difference between what a young person in Vic who goes through Ls and Ps - including the 120 hours, logged is required to do and what an international licence (or none) coming here might require. All drive on the roads.

[Sprintey]

Originally Posted by Franco Cozzo

Post COVID road rage and hyper aggressive driving is off the charts I reckon, especially around Melbourne.

Its like there's something in the water causing people to drive like mongs

The place is ungovernable. Lord Humungous waits in the wings.

[T3rminator]

Originally Posted by Franco Cozzo

Also in 12 months it was about 1200 deaths on our roads nationally, out of 26 million people - whens the point where you just accept 1200 deaths across the whole country is perfectly acceptable?

COVID killed 3375 Australians between Jan - Sep last year and you don't even rate a mention on the news on that one, but 1200 people die on the roads and we make a huge song and dance over it.

Why the difference in how we treat people dying in our community? Why is the one that happens in the car more important than the ones who die from a disease?

Its getting attention because there is an unexplained spike.

[Franco Cozzo]

Originally Posted by Sprintey

There's a difference between what a young person in Vic who goes through Ls and Ps - including the 120 hours, logged is required to do and what an international licence (or none) coming here might require. All drive on the roads.

I thought this was hilarious, they drive on the wrong side of the road and there's barely any roundabouts in the USA but hey here's your Victorian drivers licence, go for broke!

[T3rminator]

Originally Posted by Franco Cozzo

image

I thought this was hilarious, they drive on the wrong side of the road and there's barely any roundabouts in the USA but hey here's your Victorian drivers licence, go for broke!

Box Hill? He may fit right in...... in terms of driving capability.

Its all reciprocal. Hired a car in Portugal, they drive on the wrong side, and no questions asked....most difficult thing to get used to was which way to turn when doing head checks. Universal language, red means stop, green means go, thats all you need to know.

[Franco Cozzo]

Originally Posted by T3rminator

Box Hill? He may fit right in...... in terms of driving capability.

[FoxtrotGolfXray 5.0]

Originally Posted by jgmdat

What is misleading about asking a question?

That comment was directed at trev, not you. I just quoted your post to show trev that you didn't state anything about speed limits.

[Falcon SXR8]

Originally Posted by Franco Cozzo

Also in 12 months it was about 1200 deaths on our roads nationally, out of 26 million people - whens the point where you just accept 1200 deaths across the whole country is perfectly acceptable?

COVID killed 3375 Australians between Jan - Sep last year and you don't even rate a mention on the news on that one, but 1200 people die on the roads and we make a huge song and dance over it.

Why the difference in how we treat people dying in our community? Why is the one that happens in the car more important than the ones who die from a disease?

Yep we have cars passing each other head on at 100kmh all over the country only separated by 1 meter or so and we all know how brainless and useless a lot of the population is, I'm amazed the road toll isn't higher.

Of all the near accidents I experienced this year none of them had anything to do with speed, they were all just idiots who can't drive properly and do stupid things.

Had my worst one this year was stuck behind a truck and a bloke following the truck who I could tell couldn't drive for crap. So I sat back a bit while he tailgated the truck and he missed a few good opportunities to overtake. We get to another straight bit of road and I could see someone was coming the other way and to my disbelief old mate just chucks his car onto the opposite side of the road to overtake then when he realised there was a poor lady coming the other way pulls back in but the poor lady just freaked out and threw her car off the road and got it fully crossed up and heading straight for me in my old ute. I had to go bush and still don't know how I didn't get hit. The poor old lady bounced off the cutting and nearly rolled it.

I felt so bad for her she was in total shock and probably won't be comfortable driving again. This nob jockey could have killed her, me and my wife. But hey I'm sure a few more speed cameras would have saved us all.......