Stop carnage: police

End of their tether: Leongatha Police”s Leading Senior Constable Pete Barry and Sergeant Scott Bodycomb.

By Matt Dunn

LEONGATHA Police are pleading with drivers to take more care on local roads after a “horrendous and tragic” week, in which three people have died in separate incidents.
The latest was a 90-year-old Nerrena woman, who was killed in a horror head-on collision last Friday at about 11am.
“My head’s been spinning this week, with all that’s been happening. You sort of wonder how much more you can do to stop this sort of thing,” Leongatha Police Sergeant Scott Bodycomb said.
He said there were several other accidents during the week, which may easily have resulted in more fatalities. In one, a young woman ran her car off the road and narrowly missed a row of trees.
Sgt Bodycomb has written a letter to The Star this week reflecting on the accidents and asking people to change their behaviour in the lead-up to Christmas.
“I think it’s time some people in the community start taking some responsibility for their actions,” he said.
On the same day as the elderly woman’s death, mourners buried a 21-year-old Leongatha man who was crushed by a four-wheel-drive vehicle after a mishap on a Hallston property. The same day also saw two men identified hooning in town, with one, a motorcyclist, found to be above the legal alcohol limit.
“The level of frustration everyone is feeling here is extreme. You just shake your head at the end of the day. I walk into the office today and I’m told they’re looking at another individual for doing burnouts,” Sgt Bodycomb said.
“The message isn’t getting through.”
Proof of the statement is not hard to find: the motorcyclist was a 46-year-old man from Mirboo North, who had been warned earlier in the day to curtail his behaviour.
Sgt Bodycomb described the man’s actions as “absolutely stupid”.
“At the end of the day it’s little mistakes that can turn into really big issues. People don’t really think about the consequences of their actions and some are displaying sheer stupidity on the roads,” he said.
“I don’t know if it’s worst than it was, but we’ve just had a particularly bad week. I’ve never seen anything like this, but if you look for a pattern you’re not going to find it. The only pattern you’ll find is that driver error is a factor in a lot of these sort of incidents.
“I’m not just talking about the fatalities. We’ve had probably eight or nine other accidents around here recently where there easily could have been fatalities. I can’t put it down to just one thing.”
The human toll of the tragedy extended far beyond the accidents themselves, Sgt Bodycomb said.
“You think about when you’re driving home, you think when you’re at work. Different people react differently to different situations. You wouldn’t be human if it didn’t have an impact on you,” he said.
“It certainly has an impact. And it’s not just police, it’s ambulance, it’s emergency services like the firies and the SES workers who turn up to the accident sites…people who are involved in road recovery, the tow truck drivers, members of the public that are passing through.
“It has an impact on everyone.”
The elderly Nerrena woman died following a collision between three vehicles on Nerrena Road, just outside Leongatha.
Police believe a red Ford sedan driven by the woman was travelling in a north-westerly direction on Nerrena Road when it appears to have sideswiped an oncoming blue Ford Falcon utility.
The Ford sedan has then collided head on with an oncoming blue Holden Commodore sedan.
The driver and passenger of the blue Ford, a 58-year-old man and a 55-year-old woman from Nerrena, were uninjured.
The driver of the blue Holden, a 22-year-old woman, also from Nerrena, was taken by ambulance to the Leongatha Hospital for observation.

Short URL: http://www.thestar.com.au/?p=106

Posted by Chris Brown on Nov 4 2009. Filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry