Mark Buttler and Amelia Harris
VICTORIA’S annual road toll exceeded 2009’s record low just hours before the year’s end.
Two deaths yesterday, and the addition of a fatality from three months ago, took the 2010 tally to 291, one more than in 2009.
In the final road tragedy of the year a 57-year-old woman was killed in a head-on smash near Maryborough.
The woman had been driving a Ford Laser on the Pyrenees Highway at Moorlort when her vehicle and a Jeep collided just before 1pm.
She died at the scene. The Jeep’s male driver was flown to The Alfred hospital in a serious condition.
Also killed was a 44-year-old woman whose car flew through the air and hit a bridge on Melbourne’s Monash Freeway in a fiery crash early yesterday.
High speed is being investigated as the possible cause of the smash, with the woman’s car hitting an embankment and sent flying before ploughing into a bridge over the freeway at Heatherton Rd, Doveton, about 2.30am.
Police later added to the road toll the death of a 53-year-old man after a smash north of Wangaratta.
He was injured when a car hit a tree beside the Murray Valley Highway on September 20 and died four days later in The Alfred hospital.
The state’s toll for the holiday break is seven, the highest in the nation.
Deputy Commissioner Ken Lay said anything – including double demerit points – would have to be considered to save lives if Victoria ended up with another horror festive toll.
“If the data (shows) the people that are dying, the people that are getting seriously injured, and (holiday) double demerits would make a difference, it would be incumbent on Victoria Police to raise it,” Mr Lay said.
“That said, this is often about people not concentrating and going about their day-to-day business.
“I’m not certain double demerits would make any different at all to that group.”
The Brumby government rejected a plan to introduce double demerit points – which exist in NSW and WA – just weeks before last year’s shocking Victorian Christmas road toll of 16.
Mr Lay said he had not raised the idea with the Baillieu Government.
The yearly toll had earlier been tipped to hit more than 315 after several horror periods on the roads.
Mr Lay said he was confident Victoria’s road safety strategies were working, but conceded Christmas was “something we haven’t got right for a long, long time”.
But he said that serious injuries this Christmas were 20 per cent down on 2009.
More than 6000 drivers were busted for speeding and 700 for drink-driving in a statewide holiday
Source: www. heraldsun.com.au
