By JESSE GRAHAM
WINTER is coming, and if last week’s weather is any indication, it’s going to be a wet one.
Police are urging drivers to pay attention to the roads and follow the law, with roads getting drenched and a number of drivers caught flaunting the law.
Yarra Glen Police Sergeant, Richard Coulson said drivers needed to be careful on the wet roads, particularly after an incident earlier this month, where he caught a driver travelling 90 kilometres over the speed limit.
As reported in last week’s Mail, a 53-year-old Maribyrnong man and his wife were caught speeding at 193 kilometres per hour while overtaking on St Hubert’s Road in Yering – 93km/h over the limit.
It was the fastest speed Sgt Coulson had ever recorded on his in-car speed detector.
“That was a sunny day and it was a straight stretch of road,” Sgt Coulson said.
“But the roads are still speed limited for obvious reasons.”
The problem, Sgt Coulson said, is that travelling over the speed limit leaves drivers less prepared for hazards, and puts them in significantly more danger should they lose control.
“I think people need to drive to expect the unexpected,” he said.
“It can be from wildlife issues – we get a lot of kangaroos getting it and some of those are very large in size and cause a lot of destructive damage to a motor vehicle – and we obviously have slow-moving farm machinery … which creates its own hazards if you’re driving at those speeds.
“I suppose it comes back to the circumstances of the collision and the make and safety of the vehicle – the vehicle he was driving was a near-brand-new Audi vehicle with very high safety features, but I certainly wouldn’t want to test the theory out.”
With the colder weather hitting and accompanying heavy rains, roads can often become soaked and laden with puddles, which can make it easier for cars to lose traction and lose control.
“Occasionally, we get heavy dumps of rain and people hit patches of water left on the road surface and are losing control,” Sgt Coulson said.
“We’ve got notorious bends, like the spur area, because of the road surface and the slightly off-camber section.”
And all it takes is a moment for a drive to go wrong.
Sgt Coulson said drivers losing control wasn’t uncommon, citing a crash from about a month ago on the Eltham-Yarra Glen Road, where a 19-year-old Millgrove man lost control on a wet stretch of road.
“It appears his wheels have managed to lose a bit of traction just off the edge of the road surface, and he hit a tree at 70 kilometres per hour,” he said.
The driver was airlifted to hospital, and managed to not only survive the crash, but also come through with no broken bones.
The car, however, was not so lucky – photos from the crash show the front driver’s side wheel pushed back under the driver’s seat and the steering wheel on the passenger side of the car.
With winter still on the horizon, the weather is only set to be colder and wetter, and paying extra attention to the roads – and the speed limit – could prevent catastrophe.
