Fifty years ago when Victoria Declared War on 1044, it might have seemed improbable that a state now twice that population could have made the road toll almost a quarter over that time.
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In other words that equates on equal terms to almost a 90 percent reduction in needless deaths.
Drink-driving laws, seatbelts, better policing, better education, road engineering and car design have all played their part.
But it would seem in 2019 that hubris is the greatest enemy.
As many as one in five of the deaths on the roads this year have been caused by people not wearing seatbelts.
The simplest of driver precautions is being ignored out of laziness, defiance or indifference with bloody and shattering consequences.
For those whose grim work involves cutting them out, stitching them up or shuffling them off to the morgue, this glib attitude is incomprehensible.
They have valuable lessons for everybody who gets behind the wheel. But it is the tough decisions we as a community need to make that are the best hope in bringing this cost down.
Read on.