“For God’s sake, drive to the conditions,” was the message from Jim Cox, chair of the Road Safety Advisory Council, after the fifth death on Tasmanian roads this month.
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A 26-year-old man was killed at Meander on Friday, taking the state’s road toll to nine.
While the figure is below the number for the same time last year – 19 – Mr Cox said it was still heartbreaking.
“You take it personally, because you want to know how it could happen,” he said.
“There may always be an element of people who think it won’t happen at them, so for us [at the Road Safety Advisory Council] we’ll just keep chipping away at the message.”
Mr Cox said you were responsible for what you do on the road and for the lives of others.
“About two weeks ago I talked to The Examiner and said the weather was about to change and that people needed to adapt and drive to the conditions because the road that was dry and clean today would not be that way in the next few days and unfortunately that’s exactly what happened,” he said.
“The weather is changing the road conditions are changing and what was good a few weeks back has totally changed. We’ve got fog, we’ve got black ice, nothing is the same.”
Ultimately the road safety message – and drive towards zero fatalities – is generational, according to Mr Cox.
He said when he was a child, seat belts were not common and the next generation saw a push to change the culture of drink-driving.
Another element to the safe driving message was for passengers to know they had the right to speak up when they felt uncomfortable.
“I think that there are people in cars who put up with things because they don’t want speak up because they don’t want to be seen as a wuss or a wimp,” Mr Cox said.
While delivering a road safety talk to teenagers at a school recently, Mr Cox said he asked how many people had ever felt uncomfortable with the way someone was driving.
While initially no student put up their hand, some encouragement to share their stories helped the individuals to realise they were not alone.
“In the end almost all 30 had their hands up and said they wished they had said something,” Mr Cox said.
There were 38 deaths on Tasmanian roads in 2016, five more than in 2015.