These are the words of the man responsible for pioneering some of the state's most valued initiatives to mitigate road trauma, who has been on a mission to save lives over the course of 50 years.

With a background in sales, including at BTV6 in Ballarat, Donald Gibb landed an opportunity to go to Melbourne when Channel 10 launched.

From there he moved into radio and in 1969 decided to establish his own marketing consultancy.

It was this move that changed the trajectory of Mr Gibb's career and kick started his lifelong passion in campaigning for countermeasures to the state's road toll.

After 1011 people died on Victorian roads in 1969, in early 1970 a new Road Trauma Committee (RTC) was endorsed by the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons.

It came shortly after surgeons Dr Grayton Brown and Dr Bill Hughes had met with the Minister for Transport in Canberra.

There they had presented a lengthy 200-page road trauma management report and proposed the establishment of a national statutory authority for road safety to collect all fatality and serious injury data from each state and territory, though the idea was knocked back.

It was while feeling disheartened and in discussions about what their next move would be that they received a call from Mr Gibb, who had read a story in The Age titled 'Biggest Killer of Youths' in June 1970.

"Many surgeons are overwhelmed by the volume of work resulting from this carnage. All are distressed by the maiming of so many people - most of them young," Brown said in the article.

You might also like: Community actions aims to reduce state's road toll

You might also like: The clever ideas that could help reduce the road toll

You might also like: 'Extremely concerning': police dismay at people not wearing seatbelts

You might also like: Community actions aims to reduce state's road toll

You might also like: Safer vehicles: a key factor in reducing road trauma

You might also like: A surgeon's perspective on the nation's road toll

At this time Mr Gibb had been promoting a rally around Australia and was preparing to put five of the class winning cars on display in various cities across the nation.

Mr Gibb told The Courier his desire to become involved in addressing road trauma was due to the "terrible epidemic" of the sheer number of people dying on the state's roads.

As a child in Port Fairy he remembers a childhood friend being struck and killed by a vehicle while riding his tricycle. Some years later, when he was aged in his 20s and playing football in Ballarat, a close friend was killed in a crash.

The married man with two children describes these as motivations for his later work.

A lover of motorsport, he had driven in rallies across multiple Australian states.

"When I got into motorsport I saw the focus on safety by way of roll cages and harnesses," he said.

Through this involvement he realised that safety was embedded in the motorsport fraternity but not for the average driver.

"There was no road safety consciousness around and it was almost as though people thought 'oh, well we have the motor car and it's wonderful but this is the penalty we pay.

"The attitude within the authorities was about signage and pedestrian crossings."

Interested in the prospect of road safety and bewildered by the fact wearing seatbelts was necessary to compete in motorsport but not for the average motorist, Mr Gibb made the call and put a proposition on the table.

"I said I'm prepared to put 'Belt Up and Live' as a feature of these cars that will be on display," he said.

The call was to Grayton Brown, then deputy chairman of the RTC.

In the initial discussion he told Brown and Hughes not to waste any more time trying to persuade the federal government, but to focus their efforts on road safety in Victoria instead.

This reasoning was due to Victoria already having a road safety committee set up and as they had already compiled numerous reports.

These included one in 1968 about the road worthiness of motor vehicles , followed by another on the demerit point system and a third on the compulsory wearing and fitting of seatbelts in September 1969.

The RTC agreed to focus on mandatory seat belt wearing in Victoria, with it believed it could cut the number of deaths by 25 per cent and injuries by 60 per cent.

With his experience in the media, Mr Gibb put up his hand to help on a voluntary basis and a six-month intensive seatbelt campaign ensued.

As pressure mounted on governments to address road trauma, that August RACS was informed the federal government was considering the recommendations handed to them in the report.

That same month 17 people died in collisions in one weekend in Victoria, with twelve of those people aged under 21.

It came as Mr Gibb and Brown continued their media campaign, with the focus on surgeons calling for action to address the trauma - specifically to highlight the vital role mandatory wearing of seatbelts could play in reducing road trauma.

It gained many headlines across the nation as the campaign intensified to include more emphasis on the human suffering aspect and references to smashed faces and other catastrophic injuries.

"I was able to work the media," Mr Gibb said, adding the campaign for seatbelts was run with an evidence-based approach under the slogan 'Belt Up And Live'.

"Within a month of our massive campaign we got a full page story in the Australian Women's Weekly - that really shocked the political establishment.

"That established credibility and the status of the Road Trauma Committee," he added.

While the campaign drew both support and criticism, the notion quickly overcame political hurdles and reaped results within four months.

Fifty one years ago, on November 16, 1970, the Victorian Government announced it would introduce legislation that would compel drivers and passengers seated in the front seat of cars to be buckled in.

It was a world first and has since become one of the most important road safety countermeasures.

In January 1971, $20 fines were introduced in Victoria if a driver failed to wear a seatbelt while travelling in a car with one fitted.

Mr Gibb said other states laughed when the legislation was introduced, but the impact was "immediate".

The state recorded 125 less driver and passenger fatalities on Victorian roads by the end of 1971 compared to the previous year. This meant the lives of 59 drivers and 66 passengers were saved, in addition to 2466 less injuries sustained from road trauma.

Alongside the legislation and in contravention of the federal government, the Victorian government also announced a Road Safety and Traffic Authority would be set up with Brown to be deputy chairman.

Six months later Mr Gibb was appointed as the marketing consultant for the Authority and worked with Brown for some time until he retired. He then worked with his successor for a number of years - serving 10 years in the role all up.

By 1973 all other states and territories had followed to make it compulsory to wear seatbelts when traveling in a motor vehicle.

"Victoria was the road safety state. We were the jewel in the crown in road safety, even overseas," Mr Gibb said.

While riding on the success of the seatbelt legislation, it was time to address the second major issue worrying road safety advocates and medical professionals - drink drivers.

Mr Gibb assisted with the promotion of surgeon Dr Donald Hossack's research from 1971 about post mortem figures indicating a very high percentage of drivers at the Melbourne Morgue having blood alcohol levels in excess of the legal limit - .05 per cent per hundred milliliters of blood.

The study revealed 60 per cent of 171 drivers killed in crashes in Melbourne had readings above the legal blood alcohol limit, with almost one third aged under 25.

It eventually led to the implementation of compulsory blood testing of injured drivers taken to hospitals in Victoria in 1974.

"That was a massive undertaking to get the medical profession on side," Mr Gibb said.

With this blood alcohol data, they campaigned for the introduction of random breath testing of drivers. This was introduced in July, 1976.

Mr Gibb worked as the promotions consultant for the Authority from 1971 until 1981.

In this time he also created and launched a media campaign to increase road safety awareness for three to six-year-olds, and encouraged parents to talk to children about road safety.

It included four cartoon characters - a cocky dressed up with a red crest to represent stop and give way signs, an emu to represent the importance of being alert and using the eyes, a dingo with big ears to highlight the importance of listening out for vehicles and a zebra to show children where to safely cross roads.

By 1978, Mr Gibb said road safety had become "popular" in politics.

During this time with the Authority he also travelled to several international conferences to present the successful campaigns leading to pioneering road safety legislation in Victoria.

But by 1981, political changes meant Mr Gibb was not reappointed. A PR consultancy was hired and the Authority disbanded.

"The whole thing changed dramatically," Mr Gibb said.

Despite what he helped to achieve for Victoria and the countless lives it has saved, Mr Gibb believes more must be done to continue to address the number of lives lost.

He told The Courier he gets "awfully frustrated with the bloody rubbish" that comes out of government departments, but thinks he has found the solution through empowering communities.

He has long been inspired by how road safety is achieved in Europe, including Norway, Sweden and Denmark, through early education starting from when children are very young.

Mr Gibb is trying to embed a similar method in Victoria.

"It's all about education and driver training," he said.

"You get to a point where the safety consciousness is embedded in their psyche."

He said it was particularly important for this consciousness to be embedded in the minds of males, who are more likely to take risks and whose brains develop in their mid-twenties.

With the number of lives lost on Victorian roads up by 24 per cent in 2019 from the previous year, he was motivated to take action by establishing the not-for-profit road safety awareness and education organisation he had wanted for many years, called Road Safety Promotion Australia (RoSPA).

"I believe it is the missing link in our road safety nationally. You've only got to look at Norway, with the same population of Victoria and half the road toll and what they do," he said.

While less than a third of Australians live in regional and remote areas, more than half of fatal crashes occur on rural and remote roads. It is for this reason the project, which aims to promote road safety messaging, has got off the ground in Western Victoria.

It has a particular focus on seatbelts, drink driving and driver distraction.

This year ROSPA collaborated with students from Deakin University's FreelancingHUB in an effort to find a new approach to road safety.

Mostly post-graduate students from a cross section of disciplines, they worked together to investigate best practice road safety promotion and behavioural change campaigns.

Analysing road accident data from Western Victoria from 2015 until 2021, the students identified factors in road accidents and behavioural demographic targets for future road safety campaigns.

From this they compiled 14 recommendations to guide ROSPA to design and compile campaigns.

From shorter term ideas including installing road signage highlighting how many accidents and people have died on a stretch of road to encourage people to drive safely to spreading road safety awareness through the community, such as at sporting events, they also had longer-term prevention strategies.

These education programs for future accident prevention would be completed in three stages - from introducing basic road safety concepts to preschoolers through colouring in road safety sheets.

The messages would be re-emphasised through a child's schooling through further activities, such as road safety bingo, and would evolve to presentations to pre-drivers and learner drivers and again for young adults.

Mr Gibb hopes ROSPA will continue to grow from its community roots to the point where safety messages are embedded in children's TV programs and are promoted by the popular entertainment groups like The Wiggles.

He strongly believes the solution is at the level of the community, not higher authorities.

"We've got to do something. We, not they. That's what happens in Europe and it has impressed me greatly."

He strongly believes more precious lives can be saved with this approach.

"I want to see the road toll reduced in every local government area of Victoria and we want to be evaluating the performance of every local government area, so that it comes back to the responsibility of the shire mayors.

"We're not going to expend all our energy fighting fires all over the state. We've got great communities and we come together in response to emergencies like bushfires and floods. So why doesn't the same apply to road safety? Because we know the roads are bad."

Our team of local journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the Ballarat community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: