Victorian country road traffic data survey closes

RACV senior transport, planning and infrastructure manager Peter Kartsidimas said Victoria's road toll in country areas was an ongoing concern and could be attributed to a range of factors.

"We know that over half the deaths that occur on our roads in Victoria are on regional roads, even though roughly 25 per cent of people live in those regional areas," he said.

"What we also know is most of the time this is actually locals dying on regional roads, not necessarily city people."

He said the combination of people driving longer distances on roads that were not up to the same standard as metropolitan Melbourne meant crashes were almost to be expected.

"Our research shows there's about 180,000 kilometres of regional roads with speeds of 100km an hour, but only about 20pc of them meet a minimum three star safety standard," he said.

"That's just three stars - that's not even four or five stars - that's an acceptable standard, not a high standard.

"We've done some calculations and to make the remainder of those 180,000km of roads up to that three stars standard, that would take about 1000 years at the current rate of spending.

"Even if we doubled, or quadrupled, or 10-timed the number of money we're spending on our regional roads, we're not going to catch up."

The key was to introduce lower-cost measures, such as potentially reducing speed limits on roads with high crashes but low traffic.

"We need to look at all measures to keep us safe," he said.

He said the RACV's recent survey into dangerous roads received about 4000 responses.

The survey used an interactive map which highlighted 169 roads with speed limits of 80km/h or higher where there had been several fatal or serious crashes for the five-year period between 2014 and 2018.

Mr Kartsidimas said while the data was yet to be fully analysed, some trends had emerged.

He said the most common responses covered the Yarra Ranges, the Surf Coast, Greater Geelong, Mornington Peninsula and Greater Shepparton areas.

He said some of the concerns raised included erratic and dangerous behaviour of other drivers, narrow lanes and roadways, the general conditions of the road, limited overtaking opportunities and intersections.

The condition of the road was a common concern raised by motorists, he said, but fears about the behaviour of other road-users had not been raised.

He said everyone had a responsibility to improve road safety.

"Many of us think we're good drivers but we've all got a role to play, we can all drive a bit safer," he said.

"It's not just other drivers that are driving unsafely, we can all drive in a way that improves our likelihood of getting home safely."

He said the next step was to analyse the data in more detail and collate it before sharing the findings with government.

"If a lot of people are telling us about the same issue in the same location, we really need to understand that and share that with government," he said.

"The more information they have, the easier it is for them to address those problems as well."