By KATH GANNAWAY
“NO-ONE wants to be in a position where they are confronted with an ‘if only’ situation.”
Warburton Police Sergeant Tom Wilkinson is calling on individuals and the community as a whole to speak out to keep drunk and dangerous drivers off the roads.
“If only I’d intervened”.
“If only I’d rung the police”.
“If only…”
“People need to ask themselves, if they are aware of entrenched behaviour that puts others at risk, could I live with myself if I didn’t take some sort of affirmative action and someone died,” Sgt Wilkinson said as police and emergency services grappled with what more could be done to stop the death and injury on Yarra Valley roads.
Sgt Wilkinson said they were not tying an announced crackdown by police to the nexus of crashes, hotels, young drivers and alcohol.
No doubt, other factors can come into play – speed, inexperience, drugs, distraction, road condition.
Nonetheless, Sgt Wilkinson said Upper Yarra police had real concerns about alcohol, hotels and young drivers, and were cracking down even more heavily than they do already.
He said the Milners Road crash on 11 April which killed 21-year-old Charlie Robertson, left passengers Monique Kourvaras, 22, and Josh Bell, also 22, critically injured, and three others with minor injuries, had the potential to, in one night, meet the yearly average for deaths on Upper Yarra roads.
An 18-year-old girl from Cockatoo was the latest young person to die, caught out on a bend on the Healesville-Kooweerup Road at Yellingbo where there had been four serious crashes in the last couple of months.
She died at the scene on Sunday morning, 19 April.
There have been calls for more police on the back roads that are used as rat-runs, getting drivers off the highway and out of sight of police patrols.
But Upper Yarra SES spokesman, Russell Wulf, says police are out there, cracking down, and young people know it.
He has a lot of contact with young people in the Upper Yarra and his experience is that young people are already being hammered by police and talking about it.
“In private life I talk with a lot of young blokes and they know the pressure is on. They are aware of it, but keep doing silly things,” he said.
“I’ve said (to them) ‘you already have the Tattslotto numbers; you know they are there, so why would you do something that’s going to get you caught’.
“It’s not as if police are hiding, they are there.”
He says police action has had an impact over the years.
“When I first joined (the SES) they were getting 13 bad cut-outs a year,” he said.
“We’re now getting two a year, and I put that down to the police pressure.”
The nature of the tight-knit rural communities, Wulf says, also means police know who the people are who push the boundaries.
“Police are not stupid, they know them and their friends, they just can’t be on the road 24 hours a day.”
In the end, it’s about backing your mates.
“You just take the keys, drop them, hide them.
“If you’re at a party and someone’s drunk and going to have a go at someone, everyone would jump in and stop it; why can’t they do that with drink driving?
He says girls are in a strong position to influence how boys behave just by not being part of it.
“Being older now I look back and look at influence boys have on girls,” he says.
“They say it’s a man’s world; that’s rubbish.
“When you’re young all you want to do is impress the girls.
“Girls can refuse to get in a car, and they can influence their boyfriends not to get in.”
He asks every young person, driver or passenger, to remember they are sharing the roads with other friends and family members.
“They have to think about it … they, or the person they are with, could be driving home and have a head-on with their own family … their mother, father, brother or sister.
“How would they feel?”
Sgt Wilkinson says the community responsibility needs to stretch even further than the young people in the community.
The accord that was put in place between police and hotels and other licensed venues some years ago will be resurrected, reinforcing the responsibility, and potential implications, for people supplying alcohol.
“Given the footy season is here, we will be speaking as well with sporting clubs who are licensed in respect of their commitments, so we’re all working together in relation to associated road trauma,” he said.
It’s a community responsibility.
“If you see someone who is potentially a risk, ring triple-zero.
“Everyone has a responsibility and duty of care to prevent someone from driving – and that can mean advising us at the soonest opportunity.”
There is still a reluctance by people to phone triple-zero, which frustrates police who can be contacted on the road by the triple-zero operators when an incident is happening.
Getting a message on the station answering machine an hour or two later is often too late.
“It’s a different situation if someone wants to alert us to someone who is not actually on the road, but may be a recidivist drink-driver,” Sgt Wilkinson said.
“Information can be left at the station in that case, or phoned in through Crime Stoppers.
(1800 333 000).
“We’re happy to receive any information that may minimise the risk on the roads,” he said.
