Glenn Weir’s message to Victorians after a horror year on the roads

After a horror 2023 that saw road deaths reach a 15-year high, assistant road commissioner Glenn Weir says road safety is everyone’s responsibility.

Assistant Commissioner of Road Policing Glenn Weir says more care needs to be taken on the roads after a horror 2023. Picture: Jason Edwards

It is not uncommon to be disrupted by alerts and notifications on a mobile phone.

It’s something that’s become part of our everyday lives.

So imagine if every time someone died or was seriously injured on our roads your phone sent you a notification.

This is my reality.

Last year I received 296 notifications that someone was killed on the road.

And while that phone notification lasts only a few seconds the impact of that alert lasts forever.

It means police and other emergency service workers have attended a devastating scene.

It means families and loved ones are about to be notified of a terrible loss.

And it means communities will shatter, often irreparably.

The level of road trauma in our state last year was the highest we’ve experienced in 15 years.

We simply cannot accept this.

We all have to do better.

I say it often, but road safety is everyone’s responsibility.

We all have a role to play as road users whether driving a vehicle or being a passenger, pedestrian, motorbike rider or cyclist.

Victoria Police is committed to making the roads a safer place to work and travel in 2024.

We are working with our road safety partners on the next iteration of our action plan, which will inform how we will work collectively to reduce trauma on our roads.

We’ll be focusing on general deterrence, which means a more visible police presence on main roads and will target behaviours that contributed to more than half of last year’s fatal collisions.

That’s things like low-level speeding, low-range drink driving, failing to obey traffic signs, distraction caused by mobile phones and seatbelt noncompliance.

Police will also be staging more large-scale freeway operations, focusing on alcohol and drug testing.

We conducted several of these towards the end of 2023 and the results were alarming.

During a single weekend operation on the Monash Freeway one in every 72 drivers tested were caught drink or drug driving. This is completely unacceptable to us- it should be unacceptable to every other Victorian road user as well.

With advances in intelligence gathering now more than ever police have enhanced capability to detect and remove disqualified, unlicensed and suspended drivers who have no right to be using the roads.

We will unapologetically target those who put themselves and other road users at risk.

Police continue to detect far too many people breaking the road rules.

This was evident during our recent operation over Christmas when 19,386 offences were detected over 18 days.

But police cannot be at all places at all times.

We need all road users to manage their own behaviour and make responsible decisions.

In 2024, I ask all Victorians to take extra care and please consider how you can contribute to making our roads a safer place.

And I hope, that unlike me and other senior police, you never receive that life-changing text or phone call.

Glenn Weir is Victoria Police’s Assistant Commissioner of Road Policing