By NOEL MURPHY
TAC safety advocate Norm Robinson has lashed out at authorities for failing to curb the road toll on the anniversary of his son’s death at Lovely Banks.
The Bannockburn man, who headed an emotional TAC TV campaign after son Luke’s death in 2010, said too many traffic authorities and politicians were reluctant to take more-effective measures to reduce carnage on the roads.
“A lot of road safety people are more interested in making themselves viable in their position than tending to road safety,” Mr Robinson said.
He called for consideration of several initiatives to ease the toll.
Mr Robinson suggested changes to speeding fines included granting three warnings before fining drivers caught one to five kilometres an hour over the limit, doubling existing fines for five to 10km/h over, and impounding cars for 30 days if more than 10km/h above.
“We lost eight people on the long weekend – Luke died on the Labor Day long weekend,” Mr Robinson said.
“We always have a shocking Labor Day weekend and a horrible Easter – the least we had at Easter was when our TAC campaign was running.
“I don’t care whose cages I rattle, we’re still shocking with road safety.
“I had a meeting with Daniel Andrews and his idea was to give to learners in high school compulsory off-road driving training but VicRoads reckons we’d just be giving them the tools to go faster.
“But Daniel Andrews’ uncle does it with bikes in New South Wales, he’s an ex-road copper, and it works.”
Mr Robinson floated the ideas – calling for responses from Twitter followers – on the fifth anniversary of Luke’s death.
Luke, 19, was speeding when he lost control of a car on Anakie Road. His three passengers survived the crash but one was seriously injured and the others had minor injuries.
The personal stories of Mr Robinson, friends, emergency workers, work colleagues, survivors of the crash, eyewitnesses and others affected by the tragedy formed the basis for the emotional TAC campaign.
Mr Robinson also raised the idea of ability-to-pay fines after reports a European millionaire was fined $76,000 for driving 23km/h over an 80km/h. The fine was based on Finnish driver Reima Kuisla’s annual income of $9 million.
The figure was calculated on a Finnish system aimed at imposing a supposed level of fairness on speeding fine penalties.
