Minority Report Of Major Importance
Liberal Member for Western Victoria, Bev McArthur, referenced a Minority Report during the recent regional Parliamentary sitting in Bright to address critical matters not covered in the main report.
The minority report provides an alternate perspective to the Inquiry into the Increase in Victoria’s Road Toll.
It was achieved in cohort with fellow regional MP and member of the Economy and Infrastructure Committee, Tim Quilty.
Mrs McArthur said the `Beyond Zero’ strategy is impossible to achieve.
“As I have previously stated, it is more akin to ‘beyond zero common sense’.
“That the reliance might be on reducing speed limits in rural Victoria was totally unacceptable to us.
“We want the roads fixed. We do not want country people and industry penalised by speed limit reduction because city centric decision makers fail to properly address rural toad infrastructure.”
Indeed, Mrs McArthur and Mr Quilty argued for an increase in the speed limit on recently completed divided highways not already operating with a 110 km allowance.
The Minority Report also emphasises the need for better education for international drivers – especially in tourism hot spots such as the Great Ocean Road.
Twenty per cent of accidents involving an ambulance on the GOR are caused by international drivers.
“Who knows how many other accidents and near misses are caused by those unfamiliar with Australian driving conditions, let alone roads as treacherous as the Great Ocean Road and the Otways hinterland,” she said.
The ongoing pursuit of Wire Rope Barriers across the state is also challenged in the Minority Report.
In the 2019-20 financial year nearly $121 million was spent putting the barriers on 36 roads, bringing the total spend on the barriers to nearly $1 billion. Other states appear to be removing the barriers.
“In many areas we find them more dangerous than the roads themselves,” Mrs McArthur told the parliament.
“Road surfaces with dangerous potholes and bad shoulders are what critical in reducing accidents, injury and vehicle damage on our roads – not wire ripe barriers. And for motorcyclists wire rope barriers are deadly.”
Particular note has been made of the Inquiry’s failure to properly address roadside vegetation – preferring instead to use roadsides as ‘conservation zones’.
“Roads should be safe places not biodiversity areas or wild life corridors .
“For wildlife, roads are a death trap because strange as it may seem, animals actually do not look right, left and right again when they go to cross, let alone having to negotiate wire rope barriers.”
The inquiry did make one very important recommendation which was to demand greater transparency in how road infrastructure decisions are made by requiring all agencies of government to produce timely and comprehensive data.
Without adequate data, decision making is guess work at best.
3 May 2021