The Mornington Peninsula's high rates of road trauma casts a long shadow.
We've experienced the equal highest number of road deaths of Victoria's 79 municipalities between 2014 to 2021, with 64 deaths and over 1,200 serious injuries, leaving devastating and life-long impacts to victims and their families.
In a step to reduce road trauma, in late-2019 the Shire introduced a Safer Speeds trial of 80 kilometre per hour speed limits on 33 Shire-managed, high risk sealed rural roads.
These roads previously had 100 km/h and 90 km/h speed limits with a significant history of road deaths and injuries, and high crash risk, including narrow lanes and large trees close to the road.
A relatively small reduction in average travel speed leads to a disproportionally large decrease in the risk of people being killed or seriously injured.
For example, by reducing average vehicle speeds by 10 km/h, the risks of serious injuries or death can be reduced by an estimated 35 per cent and 40 per cent respectively.
The evaluation of our Safer Speeds trial has now been completed.
The evaluation looked at information such as community's views, road trauma statistics and recorded vehicle speeds over the two-year trial period.
The timing of data collection during the trial was carefully managed to minimise any potential influence of movement restrictions during COVID-19 on the evaluation.
A community sentiment survey took place between early November and early December 2020. There were 1,059 respondents to the survey.
Participants were a demographically diverse sample of randomly selected Shire residents.
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