LOVE them or hate them, wire rope barriers are here to stay on country Victorian roads.
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Victorian roads and road safety minister Luke Donnellan visited an installation site on the Calder Highway near Bendigo on Tuesday where he spruiked the benefits of the program.
They have been criticised by motorcyclists, who fear the rope acts as a “cheese shredder” and the poles are dangerous during crashes.
Mr Donnellan was dismissive of the claim.
“There is no evidence in the world which indicates these barriers do anything but save lives, full stop,” he said.
“So people can go around playing banjos, playing conspiracy theories, rubbish like that, they need to actually deal with the facts and figures.”
Some CFA brigades have raised concerns about a lack of gaps in the barriers for them to access incidents.
Mr Donnellan said the CFA had been heavily consulted about the wire rope barriers, and the decrease in trauma on the roads because of the barriers would mean they would not have to attend as many crashes in the future.
“The CFA is very supportive of this because they don’t need to turn out to as many incidents along the way,” he said.
Eighty per cent of the 25 people who died on the roads in the Barwon South West region last year were in vehicles that left their lane and hit trees, poles or another vehicle, Transport Accident Commission (TAC) data showed.
TAC road safety lead director Samantha Cockfield said every death on south-west roads was “an unacceptable and preventable tragedy”.
“It’s not only fatalities that are over-represented in country areas, one in five people seriously injured are on high-speed regional roads,” Ms Cockfield said.
In 2017, road fatalities in the region fell to 25 from 28 the previous year, with zero deaths in Warrnambool, three in Corangamite Shire and two in Moyne Shire.
