Woman and two passengers lucky to be alive after colliding with parked tractor

Port Campbell police Senior Constable Scott Thompson said there was a single-vehicle accident about 9.30am at the T-intersection of Melrose Road and the Princetown-Simpson Road.

A Mazda sedan driven by a 26-year-old Melbourne woman, with two passengers onboard, went through the intersection heading south from Simpson towards the Great Ocean Road and ploughed into a tractor parked at the nearby farm.

The female driver suffered minor injuries and was transported to the Warrnambool Base Hospital by ambulance for assessment and treatment.

"She's failed to negotiate a right-hand sweeping bend and taken out some chevron signs before running into the large John Deere tractor," Senior Constable Thompson said.

"The driver's side wheel has made impact with the tractor and moved it about a foot (30cms). The damage to the Mazda is extensive."

Senior Constable Thompson said it was suspected that drivers involved in about a dozen single-vehicle collisions had been following GPS directions, which indicated the road went straight ahead.

In April 2018 a neighbour told police officers there had been up to a dozen accidents recently at the intersection.

"There's a very strong suspicion that these accidents could be partly blamed on GPS instructions," the police officer said.

He said there were four divots where separate vehicles had gone through the intersection and car parts strewn across the road.

"A lot of these accidents are not reported because there have been no injuries suffered," he said.

"There's no trees to hit but police have attended a number of accidents at this intersection in recent weeks," he said.

Saturday was also the seventh anniversary of a motorbike accident fatality at the same intersection and it's expected that family and friends were going to attend the location to pay tribute to the deceased.

Senior Constable Thompson said police wanted to update the warning to motorists about the Melrose Road and the Princetown-Simpson Road T-intersection.

"This single-vehicle collision could have been much worse but there seems to be an ongoing issue with the intersection," he said.

"We would request that drivers take care, drive to the road conditions and not just rely on GPS instructions.

"We are seeing a lot more people on the roads in the past couple of months after the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We're seeing something approaching normal traffic volumes," he said.

A 30-year-old Cobden woman was also fortunate to avoid serious injuries after running off the Cobden-Warrnambool Road near Ayresford Road on Sunday morning.

The driver lost control of her vehicle in wet conditions and struck a tree at 7.20am Sunday while heading home to Cobden.

Terang police Senior Constable Mel Gray said the car was extensively damaged and the woman was "very lucky" to avoid being seriously injured.

"We just want to remind all drivers to always drive to the road conditions," she said.

The collisions happened after a motorcyclist from Melbourne died on the outskirts of Terang on Thursday evening after colliding with the rear of a Ford Territory turning off the Princes Highway.

That fatality followed four deaths in two months on south-west roads between June and August at Berrybank, Dixie and Cobden.

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