This week, five years ago, Luke Taylor was lying on the side of Cuthberts Road so badly hurt in a crash he had to be revived three times.
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Last month the cyclist's fight back reached new heights when he represented Victoria on the international stage at the Oceania Championships in Brisbane.
But now Mr Taylor wants his long road to recovery to be part of a wider alarm about road safety and in particular the dangers to vulnerable road users as the region heads into winter conditions.
"The repercussions of being involved in a really serious road incident - it's completely avoidable - but when it happens it is devastating on so many fronts," he said.
"Physically, it smashes your body to pieces ... someone like me, I'll never get back to where I was before."
Mr Taylor was travelling on his bicycle through an intersection in Cardigan on a morning ride when he was hit at an estimated 80km/h by a man driving a ute.
His injuries included eight fractures in the left femur, compound fractures of the left tibia and fibula, fractured right femur which shattered in the middle, an 'open book' pelvic fracture, fractured T4 vertebrae, and a ruptured bladder.
He lost so much blood his heart stopped three times.
"The biggest issue I have at the moment is I live with serious chronic pain - I take something like 25 medications a day just to stay on top of pain, but also keep my bladder working and basically to keep my body functioning with internal injuries that happened," Mr Taylor said.
"I'll require ongoing surgery for the rest of my life to deal with the bone condition that has developed due to the trauma of the accident."
Whether you mean it or not - somebody has to carry that burden for the rest of their life.
- Luke Taylor
Historically, the colder months spell a higher chance of road trauma for those travelling outside a car.
In pre-pandemic years from 2009 to 2018, Monash University Accident Research Centre found June had the highest number of reported pedestrian collisions, followed by May and July.
Sunday will bring National Road Safety Week - this year focusing on road users other than drivers - to a close.
However, as Ballarat Highway Patrol Sergeant David Whitwell explains, the region is in the thick of a period where attention to pedestrians - or 'vulnerable road users' - is critical because light and visibility are decreased.
"Other factors [include] people running across the road to maybe avoid rain, getting wet or cold and just simply not looking where they're going," he said.
"When we talk about vulnerable road users, we're talking about pedestrians, cyclists, mobility scooters, e-scooters, basically anyone who's not driving a motorised vehicle that's using our roads."
Victoria Police figures show there was one pedestrian death and 34 pedestrian injuries across the Ballarat and Moorabool regions between January and December 2021.
"That's why that's the focus this year ... that trauma involving pedestrians or fatalities involving pedestrians have doubled compared to this time last year, we've seen a double in the fatalities," Sergeant David Whitwell said.
"I think that's attributed not to an increase in pedestrian traffic, but that's just purely an increase in vehicle traffic, like road cars on the road."
Police advice to pedestrians during Road Safety Week included avoiding noise cancelling headphones, stopping when using a smartphone for navigation, and on rural roads, walking towards oncoming traffic.
For other vulnerable road users, wearing high-visibility clothing, ensuring bike lights were in working order and visible when travelling were advised.
Sergeant Whitwell, who has been with the police force for 25 years, said dealing with road trauma was one of the more difficult aspects of policing.
"The impact is not just on the person that's been involved in the trauma, it extends to family, the emergency services workers need to attend and their families, the vicarious trauma extends right through the community for each incident that occurs," he said.
For Mr Taylor, he said while he was incredibly fortunate to have a supportive family and community around him, there was "multifaceted levels of trauma" that flowed from a serious road accident.
"The other impact is a social impact ... all of those things go to making your transition from living in hospital for almost a year back into the community a lot easier, but it has a major impact on your family, that completely disrupts their life," he said.
"One of the aspects that I think a lot of people overlook is, I'm not the only victim ... there was a guy who hit me, he made a mistake but trauma has to live with you after what happened and what he went through on that day, the effects rippled through his family and his support network.
"There's also a psychological element to it whether you mean it or not - somebody has to carry that burden for the rest of their life."
Cyclist safety advocacy organisation the Amy Gillett Foundation chief executive Dan Kneipp said across Australia, around 20 cyclists will be hospitalised every day, and just over every week a cyclist will be killed - most commonly from being hit by a car or truck.
"Ballarat, like a lot of cities in Australia, the roads aren't designed in a safe way, and what it should be is the road should be built so that when a driver makes a mistake, or when a cyclist makes a mistake, it doesn't lead to the person riding their bike being hospitalised or killed," Mr Kneipp said.
The Foundation formed after elite Ballarat cyclist Amy Gillett was killed by a driver in Germany in 2005, and is calling for reform on speed limits in built-up areas.
Mr Kneipp said at the current default speed of 60km/h there was a 90 per cent chance a pedestrian or a cyclist would die in a collision.
"If you get that down to 30km/h that goes down to a 10 per cent chance of dying, at 40km/h it's a 30 per cent chance," he said.
Another key recommendation to improve road safety for vulnerable road users is to 'flip' where bike lanes are on Australian roads.
"Ballarat is a great example where you can put in much safer bike lanes just by flipping where the parking is and where the bike lane is ... flipping those to creates the barrier of cars so that if a driver is distracted, something goes wrong they run into a parked car instead of running into a cyclist," Mr Kneipp said.
"The second one is shoulders, if you've got a country road and you don't have a shoulder on it, then where does the bike go? They're sharing a bike going at 20km/h hour with a truck at 100km/h an hour or the bike moves onto a walking shared path - and if you've got a fast bike or walking shared path, that's not a great outcome either.
"When you see the animosity between drivers and cyclists, it's due to bad engineering. It's due to roads that push cyclists and drivers together so that when I'm driving as a driver that makes me really nervous and when I'm cycling it makes me really scared."
For Luke Taylor, he said in terms of attitudes towards vulnerable road users in Ballarat, there was a large gap to fill.
"Pedestrians, elderly drivers, disabled road users and cyclists alike, I'm sure have all been honked at or abused," he said.
"I would implore all road users to consider that as annoying or inconvenient as it maybe to be hindered by a cyclist, or to wait for a blind person, wheelchair bound or elderly person to cross the road, park their car or get in and out of their vehicle, that person is - as we all are - loved by a family and friends somewhere.
"Each person has the right to use the road safely and return home at the end of the journey."
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