After a horror weekend on our roads, which saw seven dead and many more left injured, a veteran road safety campaigner is looking for an answer as to why the state's road toll has climbed so rapidly.
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Road Safety Promotion Australia director Donald Gibb has spent a life pushing for safer roads, which includes involvement in the implementation of compulsory seatbelts in 1970, and the implementation of post-crash blood alcohol testing in 1974.
Each new measure saw the state's road toll drop, from more than 1000 per annum in the 1970s, to less than 400 by the 2000s.
However 2023 has proven to be a dangerous year on our roads - the state's current road toll as of November 5 sits at 244 lives lost, more than in all of 2022.
There were a total of 11 road deaths across the state since Friday, including the death of five in Daylesford on Sunday after a car ploughed into the seating area of the Royal Hotel.
The morning prior, a 47-year-old Maryborough man was killed in a single-car crash in Clunes near the Clunes-Mount Cameron Road.
A teenager was also killed in Stawell when he was hit by vehicle at a burnout event in the town on Saturday afternoon.
"To put it bluntly, I am confused, in terms of what the current situation is. I just feel that we have to get more information and more of a breakdown on what is behind this," Mr Gibb said.
"I think we will have to wait for an inquest, whenever that might be - 12 or 18 months time, to get some information.
"We urgently need more road and traffic data. Urgently."
Mr Gibb joins calls from others, such as the RACV, and the Australian Automotive Association regarding the release of road safety data from state governments to the public.
Australian Automotive Association managing director Michael Bradley said the states had previously promised transparency but hadn't delivered.
"Every state and territory government has promised to report the road safety data they collect, but so far none have," Mr Bradley said.
Mr Bradley called to have a data transparency promise written into any new road funding agreement between the federal and state governments to force the states into releasing the information.
The AAA is pushing for three key datasets to be made public: road condition data, crash data, and enforcement data.
The most important road condition data comes from the Australian Road Assessment Program, or AusRAP.
"AusRAP collects 22 different data points every 200 metres along a given road, with everything from the road surface, lines, barriers, whether it has rumble strips, and at the end it spits out a star rating which essentially tells you how likely you are to be injured driving along that road," Mr Bradley said.
It is hoped a public release of data will be able to better inform road funding, and criticism of where road funding is really needed.
Mr Gibb also criticised the lack of "direction" in addressing road safety from a government perspective.
"We have had four ministers for road safety in eight years in Victoria," he said.
"I think that you want to try and get some change, there is urgent need for change, and the first thing would be to get more data and more analytical about what is behind the increased road and traffic trauma."
