Veteran road researcher and consultant Dr Bruce Corben says Victoria is at least 10 years behind leading countries Sweden and The Netherlands when it comes to designing safe roads that will save lives.

The former Monash Accident Research Centre director, who has more than 20 years experience, says painting white lines on 100 km/h roads between cars that will travel at a closing speed of up to 200 km/h is simply not good enough. 

“We’ve got many decades of tragic experience – on many of our roads we don’t have the right infrastructure … in place to prevent the types of crashes that happen on those classes of road,” Dr Corben said. 

“The ideas of having people driving towards each other at a closing speed of at least 200 km/h… and separated by a white line … too often it leads to very severe head on collisions.” 

Safe Systems Solution engineer Kenn Beer said five year research showed around 10 per cent of all Victorian fatalities occur in Western Victoria,  with most of those crashes occurring on roads with a 100 km/h speed limit.

“In the past we’ve focused on trying to make humans act perfectly all the time. But humans are the most fallible part of the road system,” Mr Beer said.

“The Safe System says that, while we’ll continue to strive to make road users make better choices, make less mistakes and take care, we need to accept that they will still make mistakes.

“We all do. And when the mistake happens, the vehicles and the roads and roadsides need to be engineered to be forgiving.” 

Ideally, Dr Corben said all 100 km/h roads should have wire rope barriers, if not the speeds should be lowered.

He said increasing technology could eventually mean rope barriers were not always necessary – however this technology would only work if the quality of rural roads improved dramatically. 

“There are many thousands of kilometres of roads that don’t have that quality of infrastructure,” Dr Corben said.

“And at the moment we are not quite sure if they ever will get that quality of infrastructure.” 

Dr Corben said Victoria could slash its road toll to around 150 fatalities a year if it cut speed limits to 70 km/h on poor quality roads and continued mass investment into roadside and centreline barriers. 

“We’re now getting down to some tough options if we are going to take our loss of life to substantially lower levels,” Dr Corben said.

“(If implemented) I think that could take us to 150 or so.”  

Roads are failing to adequately protect motorists from dying in high-speed crashes, experts say, as the need for better, safe infrastructure comes under the spotlight.

World road safety leaders increasingly recognise improving road infrastructure as a key factor in reducing the road toll. 

A detailed report by the Monash University Accident Research Centre claims physical features play a major role in determining the levels of mobility and safety, particularly for rural roads.

Improvements in the infrastructure can create a safer and a more ‘crashworthy’ environment. 

Models including Vision Zero in Sweden and Sustainable Safety in The Netherlands. 

The physical features of the road play a major role in determining the levels of mobility and safety, particularly for rural roads, researchers say. 

These models argue that the road-transport system can only be safe when the road infrastructure is designed and operates in a way that explicitly recognises both human tolerance to violent forces and normal human error so that death and serious injuries can be prevented. 

Swedish National Road Council’s director of traffic safety Professor Claes Tingvall says that every time a person might fail the road system cannot. 

“You have to take human and our behaviour into account when designing the road transport system. It is understanding that we will never be perfect,” Professor Tingvall said. 

Effectively, this means reducing travel speed and providing road infrastructure that is forgiving of human error. 

Experts say road features play a vital role in determining the risk of crashing, but also the severity of injuries sustained in the crash. 

MUARC research found the following features critical: the presence of roadside hazards such as trees and poles; intersections and their design and operational features; the geometry of roads and their design speeds; and road surface conditions. 

Professor Tingvall said road safety professionals must always be searching for answers and working to improve road conditions. 

“We have to carefully look at (the roads) and say – what was wrong here? What should I have done as a professional and responsible person in the system?,” Professor Tingvall said. 

“We’ve done that with simple things like barriers, with calming traffic in built-up areas … quite simple things.” 

VicRoads regional director Western Victoria Ewen Nevett said the Victorian Government and supporting agencies would continue to invest in safer and more up-to-date infrastructure to save lives on regional roads.

“At the same time the community can be confident that the Victorian Government and its road safety agencies are doing everything we can to ensure our roads are as safe as possible,” Mr Nevett said.

“This year there will be a lot of activity in Western Victoria as we work to install safety treatments like flexible barriers and rumble strips that we know will save local lives.” 

Centreline barriers will be rolled out on undivided high speed, high volume, rural roads around the state where they will be most effective in preventing head-on and run-off-the-road to the right crashes. 

Full length roadside barriers will be installed on the left and right hand side of targeted divided roads, and on the left-hand side of undivided roads at high risk locations. 

Danish Road Safety Council expert Jesper Solund, who will deliver a presentation in Ballarat next month Denmark remained in “deep debt” to Victoria. 

“We have been quite successful,” he said “We are in deep debt to Victoria. We saw figures that within very few years you (Victoria) declined from 700 (road fatalities) to 350. (We are) Quite sure that the use of speed cameras in Denmark was related to our reduction.”

“We can see that Victoria has great improvement and then you were stable for a long time.

“If we plan to lower the road toll by 2020, we need to do something much more dramatic.” 

The TAC admits Victoria has not always been at the forefront of global infrastructure developments. But that is changing.

A record investment in safer roads highlights the TAC’s shifting approach to the Vision Zero Swedish model which acknowledges there is only so much difference behavioural changes can make when it comes to fatalities. 

TAC manager road safety Samantha Cockfield said the approach at the heart of the Towards Zero vision was understanding that people don’t want to have crash but that they do make mistakes.

“We need to design our road system to be forgiving. We need to design a road system not be reliant on peoples’ road behaviour only,” Ms Cockfield said. 

She said not improving the infrastructure would essentially mean asking and relying on the five million Victorians who use the road daily to “behave perfectly everytime.” 

She said infrastructure was far more reliable.

“It is there 24 hours a day seven days a week 365 days a year. It protects every body who uses the road the system. It’s there permanently,” Ms Cockfield said.

“It doesn’t mean crashes won’t occur – it means the impact won’t cause serious injury or death .” 

Experts including former MUARC director Dr Bruce Corben have questioned the ability of Victoria’s “poorer quality roads” to support safe technology in cars.

“We are incredibly committed to making our roads safer and more survivable. It’s about our local streets,” Ms Cockfield.

“Eventually these technologies will become more commonplace and will really keep people in their lanes and there may be less need for infrastructure.

”We hope to see a time when it will be very rare what people get seriously injured on our roads.”