Pressure on road carnage

By Casey Neill
YARRA Ranges remains among Victoria’s five worst areas for road trauma, according to police figures.
But Yarra Ranges Traffic Management Unit (TMU) Officer in Charge Sergeant John Morgan, said police are doing all they can to stop the carnage.
Victoria Police data last week revealed that during 2009 Yarra Ranges was fifth out of the state’s 55 police service areas for road casualties.
The rankings were based on the percentage of fatality and serious injury collisions and the rate of serious casualties per 1000 population.
Yarra Ranges scored 3.09 in 2009. This was a slight improvement on 3.2 in 2008 and well below the state’s worst spot – Melbourne’s inner city roads – at 4.57.
There were 1115 collisions in the region during 2009, which was down on 1121 in 2008.
These included 162 serious injury collisions and 15 fatal crashes.
Four of the fatal collisions involved single cars colliding with trees. Cars overturned in three of the fatal crashes and four of the accidents involved two cars colliding.
Sgt Morgan said the incidence of serious crashes in the Yarra Ranges had improved over the past year.
“We’re not getting called to as many collisions,” he said.
He said many casualty accidents were due to driver inattention.
“From an enforcement point of view I don’t think we can do anything more,” he said.
Sgt Morgan said the Yarra Ranges policing area measured 250,000 square kilometres – much larger than neighbouring municipalities that polled below them – and had more roads with higher speed limits.
“So when you do have impacts, they’re high speed impacts,” he said.
Sgt Morgan put the slight decrease in casualties down to targeted police operations, particularly those aimed at motorcyclists and drink drivers.
“These operations will keep continuing and, hopefully, they’ll keep reducing the number of casualties,” he said.
During 2009 Yarra Ranges TMU ran several operations on the Black Spur to combat motorcycle collisions but also scooped up other road users.
“We caught anyone doing the wrong thing,” he said.
“We’ve had some really good results.”
“We did a risk assessment and found motorcycle collisions were one of the highest risks in the Yarra Ranges.”
“We wanted to change driver attitude by letting them know that if they were going to speed they would get caught.”
Yarra Ranges police ran preliminary breath tests on “rat runs – where people go to avoid major roads” on Friday, Saturday and Sunday mornings for several months.
They also targeted hotels on Friday and Saturday nights.
Sgt Morgan said police targeted repeat offenders by monitoring them from unmarked police cars. He also said that many drink drivers were informed on by concerned members of the public.
“We found that a lot of our serious collision injuries were alcohol related,” Sgt Morgan said.
Police impounded “quite a few” hoons’ cars during Operation Doon 2.
“The incidence of hoon driving has really dropped in the area,” Sgt Morgan said.
Yarra Ranges TMU also ran Not So Fast in partnership with the council.
“The council puts a speed trailer in a 50kmh area so drivers can check their speedo,” Sgt Morgan said.
“A couple of weeks after, the police enforce the limit.”