![A vehicle which recently came to grief on a notorious stretch of the Cobden-Lavers Hill Road, Simpson. It was written off. Picture supplied. A vehicle which recently came to grief on a notorious stretch of the Cobden-Lavers Hill Road, Simpson. It was written off. Picture supplied.](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/134792786/e6869db5-daeb-4039-af86-d9ae2b63f3e9.jpg/r0_0_768_1024_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Residents are demanding a dangerous south-west road be fixed as more vehicles lose traction on the notorious stretch.
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At least five cars have come to grief in recent months while driving on the Lavers Hill-Cobden Road in Simpson, north of the Ag Warehouse and before Coradjil Road.
Polwarth MP Richard Riordan said the stretch had "no grip left".
"This bit of road has been notorious, we're up to about five or six accidents," he said.
"When it gets water on it, it becomes lethal."
He has backed a petition calling on the government to take urgent action on the issue. The petition - to officially be launched at a gathering near the Ag Warehouse on Monday, July 8 - has already attracted 57 signatures.
"It's such an important bit of road," Mr Riordan said.
"I've done questions to the minister, all that sort of thing, so has Dan Tehan. We've both been campaigning for a year or more, just this week again the government has decided to lower the speed to 40kmh instead of doing something about it.
"The point here is that 40kmh speed zones don't fix the roads and it's an indictment on the whole system that after 18 months of carry on about the danger of this road the best they can do is lower the speed.
"It's not good enough, it's a major artery in a really important agricultural region."
A Department of Transport and Planning spokesperson told The Standard drivers were urged to slow down and drive to the conditions.
The spokesperson said the road was inspected regularly, would be checked again in coming days and any repairs would need to wait for drier, warmer conditions.
But Corangamite Shire mayor Kate Makin said improvements were needed now.
"We need more investment in their roads and they need to fix them instead of lowering the speed limit," she said.
"It's a 100kmh road and I'd like it to stay that way. The residents are sick of it - we don't get the infrastructure or money coming back to our roads."
She said she knew of a particularly dangerous incident.
"There was one car which went off the road at that section - it was a write-off," Ms Makin said.
"It actually went into a farmer's paddock, so the farmer has had to do some work including putting the fence back up."
Mr Riordan and Ms Makin's comments come after Alistair Clarke, of Clarke's Pies, lost traction and came to grief on the same stretch while making a routine delivery in May.
Simpson resident Stephen Hunt at the time said the bend was known to be dangerous among most locals and he feared a fatality was just a matter of time.