Driving ambition to keep roads safe

Andrew Mathieson
RON Medson likes talking up road safety to anyone who prepared to listen but was left speechless when road rage arrived loud and clear at his car window.
Driving down Geelong’s Shannon Avenue with the family inside, Ron was forced to hit the brakes when the lights changed suddenly.
“The guy behind me jumped out of his car because he wanted me to go through the red light,” Ron recalls.
“He then put his fist right through the driving side window because I wound it up.
“One of the kids took the number plate and when I rang the police after I got home they said ‘Has that guy been at it again’.”
For the cops, it was just a routine call.
They gave Ron the phone number of the offender’s wife who knew the drill all too well.
A few apologetic words were exchanged and sure enough she put money in an envelope to replace the smashed window.
The damage was done but the message was never lost.
“That never left my mind,” a shaken Ron says.
“It means you’ve got to be aware of everybody around you.”
Ron had retired in 1993 for a bit of peace and quiet at Clifton Springs.
But the gentle ribbing of a neighbour ensured it wasn’t going to last.
The neighbour, Senior Sergeant Shane Coles, the public face of Geelong’s Traffic Management Unit, was looking for someone to drive a road safety initiative from their Drysdale Rotary Club.
“He was walking his dog past one day and he told me to get out of the damn garden, get off your backside and help somebody out,” Ron chuckles.
“I thought I probably was doing bugger all.”
No formal qualifications were required but Ron was still keen to put his head down in every possible book to help give older drivers a few safety tips.
What he later discovered was his own bad habits, especially using his left foot on the brake.
The technique was a throwback to towing a caravan around, a common thread with older drivers.
It took three months to change feet after nearly 50 years of driving, Ron now laughs.
“My father taught me to drive,” he says.
“In those days you just drove up, made a U-turn, came back and that was it.
“They didn’t look where your feet were or anything else.”
As a volunteer road safety speaker, Ron would first speak to one probus club, then a Rotary group, then another.
His engagements have now stretched to hundreds of service organisations, car clubs, senior citizen bodies and church groups to tally around 12,000 people at last count.
Ron’s message proved so popular last year that more than 5000 heard the roadsafe volunteer speak.
They hang on his every word.
One anecdote that grabs their attention is from Ron’s time during national service.
His navy officers told their underlings to avoid smoking, heavy drinking and loose women on Hong Kong’s streets.
“I tell people that I failed one of them – that I bought 200 packets of cigarettes,” Ron admits, “so I now hold the box up and, out of that box, I slide a packet of cigarettes.
“That was the very box I bought 50 years ago and, fortunately, I never smoked them.
“That has saved me from getting cancer.
“I say the lesson of not smoking those cigarettes was important to me, like driver safety is to you.”
The gift of the gab has been a godsend for Ron.
The same audience also requests talks on the chequered history of former industrial giant International Harvester, whose Geelong plant employed Ron for most of his working life.
“If you have the ability to talk like I do, you may as well utilise it,” he reflects.
“Artists have a great hand with a brush and I’ve probably got a mouth that I can talk about anything.”