Six dead, two earnestly injured after horror run on Victorian roads
Six people have been killed and two critically injured after four deadly car accidents and a serious motorcycle crash in less than fourteen hours across Victoria.
The most horrific crash in the horror period from 8pm on Friday claimed the lives of two fellows and a woman after the Commodore sedan in which they were travelling collided with a truck at Burrumbeet near Ballarat just after midnight on Saturday.
Road Policing Assistant Commissioner Doug Fryer said all six deaths could have been avoided, labelling tiredness, distraction, speed and impairment as factors in the tragedies. Those killed were aged from twenty three to 82.
Mr Fryer called on Victorians to work together to stop the “carnage” on the roads. “We are now at ninety lives lost versus seventy six last year,” he said.
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The car in which four people were travelling before it collided with a truck. Photo: Channel Seven
“If we all don’t work together to address the carnage on our roads, we’ll see an annual lives lost toll of over three hundred this year. And we haven’t seen that number since 2008.”
The tragic toll across the state included;
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* Three dead and one in a critical condition after the Burrumbeet crash,
* The death of a 23-year-old man in Hopetoun after his car crashed into a tree shortly after 8pm Friday,
* A crash at Tuerong on the Mornington Peninsula which claimed the life of a masculine driver and earnestly injured a passenger. The death will not be added to the official road toll as it occurred on a private property.
* The death of a 58-year-old man in Myrtleford on Saturday morning after his car crashed into a tree,
* A motorcyclist in his 30s was left in a critical condition after crashing into a tree at Toongabbie in Gippsland,
Mr Fryer said it was too early to confirm, but there was some indication that alcohol was involved in two of the fatalities.
However, he said there were no drug or alcohol involved in the Burrumbeet crash which claimed the lives of an 81-year-old Maryborough man, an 82-year-old Beaufort man, and a 72-year-old Castlemaine woman. A 62-year-old woman from Beaufort is in a stable but critical condition at the Alfred Hospital.
Mr Fryer said the vehicle was attempting to cross the Western Highway when a B-double truck, travelling at one hundred km/h “t-boned it”.
“The car pulled in front and the truck …went straight through it,” he said.
“A devastating scene. We have spoken to the truck driver, he is fairly traumatised from it. He said he witnessed the car, and he thought the car spotted him, it slowed down but then flipped through that intersection in his way. He was in a B-double truck and incapable to stop.”
The truck driver was not injured in the crash.
Mr Fryer would not confirm if there was any “alcohol involved” in the accident which eyed a 23-year-old man die at Hopetoun. However, he confirmed the man had recently left a hotel.
Mr Fryer said it was too early to say but there could be medical issues that had contributed to the death of the 58-year-old man in Myrtleford.
He said the spate of accidents could not be blamed on the weather. “It hasn’t been raining,” he said.
Burrumbeet has been the scene of a series of fatal and serious accidents in latest years, a number involving trucks. Two youthfull dudes and two other passengers were critically injured when a car ran off the road and into a tree in 2011. In 2012, a man was killed 3km west of Burrumbeet in a head-on collision inbetween a car and a truck.
Victoria’s Roads and Road Safety minister Luke Donnellan said far too many people had been killed on the state’s roads this year. “These numbers represent real people who will be missed by their families, friends and colleagues. A single life lost is one too many,” he said.