This year marks the 50th anniversary of the state of Victoria introducing legislation to mandate the wearing of seatbelts, however, police are frustrated that people are flouting the law and electing not to buckle up.
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Western Region Division 3's Senior Sergeant Ben Young said police had great concerns in relation to people choosing not to wear seatbelts, despite evidence showing that people are more likely to be seriously injured or killed if they are involved in a collision and are not strapped in.
"It is extremely concerning for us when we are aware of how important [seatbelts] are and the job that they do," Senior Sergeant Young said.
In the last 12 months, 87 people died in collisions on roads around the region, equal to 1.6 people dying each week. Of that number, 15 people who died were not wearing a seatbelt.
It is a trend that police are keen to halt.
So far this year, six of the almost 30 people who have died on roads across the state are confirmed to have not been wearing a seatbelt.
In the Ballarat police service area two people have already lost their lives this year, with one of those people not wearing a seatbelt.
Speaking from experience over the January and February period last year, in the Ballarat area alone we had nine people die over an eight week period which meant weekly I was sitting in my office trying to explain to distraught families how their loved one died.
- Senior Sergeant Ben Young
"After years of attending these collisions as well as many of the hundreds of serious injury collisions that occur every year, I cannot understand why people don't make the simplest of decisions and buckle up before driving."
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In December last year, Ballarat Highway Patrol intercepted a female driver in a particularly baffling case. The driver had five child passengers in the rear of her sedan.
One infant was in a child restraint, however two others were sitting on the back seat unrestrained and a fifth was curled up in the foot well behind the front passenger seat.
He urged community members who choose to drive without wearing a seatbelt not to think about the possibility of being pulled over by police and receiving a $330 fine, but to think about him in his office, trying to explain to a family how their loved ones' decision not to wear a seatbelt had contributed to either their life altering injuries, or death.
The plea comes at a particularly poignant time. Last February saw a spike in road trauma, by which 33 people had lost their lives across the state and 18 of those lives lost in Western Victoria.
"That was more than four people a week losing their lives on western region roads which is extremely disturbing to us and has a huge impact on the community," he said.
"It's important that in February this year we ensure that we don't have the same amount of trauma on our roads."
Senior Sergeant Young said that across the region police were continuing to see road trauma being driven by speed, fatigue, impairment and distractions, while vulnerable road users such as pedestrians were increasingly being represented.
"This is not an issue that we can enforce our way out of and we are calling on all road users to assist by planning your journeys, allowing extra time to get to destinations, driving to the road conditions, not driving whilst tired or intoxicated and not driving whilst distracted which includes all distraction not just mobile phones and electronic devices," he said.
