The majority of the 146 deaths on regional Victorian roads last year were people driving in their local area, according to the latest road trauma data, with a renewed effort to turn this around.

Acting Minister for Roads, Road Safety and the TAC Jacinta Allan joined representatives from the TAC and Road Safety Victoria to release the data and urge regional Victorians to take extra care on their roads.

Analysis of the 2019 lives lost statistics has revealed that it continues to be regional Victorians who die on the state’s rural roads, with nearly three quarters of the people killed last year dying close to their home address.

Across regional Victoria, around 73 per cent of deaths were people driving in their local region with run-off-road and head-on crashes resulting in 94 fatalities while 101 people were killed in high-speed zones.

That’s why the Andrews Labor Government is continuing its unprecedented investment into proven road-safety infrastructure – more than 340 kilometres of safety barriers will be rolled out in addition to the 2,300 kilometres already installed on high-risk roads, to help prevent head-on and run-off road crashed.

The total number of crashes resulting in deaths and serious injuries on roads with safety barriers has almost halved since works began. During 2019, barriers across the state were hit 3,307 times – representing thousands of potential serious or fatal crashes avoided.

An additional 1,600 kilometres of rumble strip line-marking will also be rolled out across the state to alert drivers if they veer out of their lane and 117 rural intersections will be made safer with improvements including rumble strips and signage, and more Side Road Activated Speed technology will be installed at the highest-risk sites.

Last year, the Labor Government funded more than $120 million dollars to increase mobile speed camera enforcement by 75 per cent and a new fleet of state-of-the-art mobile road safety cameras is currently being rolled out at more locations across Victoria.

People dying on our roads is a preventable tragedy which is why the Government has also established Road Safety Victoria and work is well underway to develop Victoria’s next road safety strategy.