A cry for Bella Canfield as mum urges lower limits on rural roads

Road safety experts have backed a call from the mother of Bella Canfield, who was hit and killed by a car driven by her neighbour Miles Parry on a lonely Victorian country road, for lower speed limits on small rural roads around Australia.

Leigh and Linda Canfield, with their youngest daughter, Ava, at the place Bella Canfield was hit and killed by her neighbour Miles Parry. Picture: Josh Robenstone

The mother of Bella Canfield, the 18-year-old killed outside her family’s farm leading to a dangerous driving case that divided a rural Victorian community, has called for lower speed limits on small country roads.

Linda Canfield’s call has been backed by the CEO of the Australasian College of Road Safety, Ingrid Johnston, who has accused the federal government of last week whitewashing a national ­review into the issue.

Bella was killed instantly in January 2022 when she was struck by a car driven at the 100km/h speed limit by Miles Parry from the neighbouring Parry family. Bella was hit while walking on the remote narrow single lane sealed road with gravel edges. The 100km/h speed limit is the default speed limit for unsigned rural roads in Victoria despite many of them being single lane and poorly maintained with nowhere for pedestrians like Bella to walk. Parry did not see Bella ­despite her walking on the road, leading to a dangerous driving charge, of which he was acquitted in March. The tragedy, covered in The Australian Weekend Magazine last week, has divided the rural community northwest of Bendigo in central Victoria and caused a bitter rift between the Canfields and the Parrys, two of the best-known farming families in the region.

Linda Canfield believes her daughter would be alive today if the default 100km/h speed limit had been lower on the small and poorly maintained road outside her farm.

“It should be an 80km/h limit, not just because we lost Bella but it is a single lane road where people need to get off the side of the road when approaching another car,” Ms Canfield said. “It is used by lots of trucks and heavy equipment and there are distractions with what primary producers are doing in each paddock.”

Bella Canfield, 18, died after she was hit by a car. Picture: Facebook

Dr Johnston from the ACRS believes Bella should never have died and that the “system” failed both Bella and Mr Parry on that fateful day.

“It’s an absolutely tragic case and it’s really one where the system has set people up to fail,” she said. “It is really something that we haven’t grappled with as a nation, because we have this history of having 100km/h limits on tiny, little rural roads like this.

“We’ve become accustomed, we’ve grown up thinking that that is safe, and it’s actually a really long way from being safe.”

Dr Johnston said it was “a difficult conversation to have” because people become concerned about travel times in rural areas over long distances.

“All of that is absolutely valid and needs to be taken into consideration. But as a starting point, we really need to understand that the way we have set the roads up at the moment is not safe.”

In the case of the one-lane Wedderburn-Serpentine Road in Salisbury West where Bella was killed, Dr Johnston asked “where is a pedestrian supposed to safely walk? Why is it that the only place we’re providing for a pedestrian to walk in this area is on a 100km/h road? That’s not safe, that is setting up failure and that’s not fair to anyone.”

State governments set default speed limits on unsignposted rural roads with guidance from a foundational set of rules from the federal government.

The government recently reviewed those rules with a view to possibly lowering the standard 100km/h default speed limit on rural roads across the country (110km/h in Western Australia) but it received strong pushback from the states.

The politics of the issue are that those who call for slower, safer limits on small rural roads are outnumbered by those who say it would adversely impact travel times across large distances therefore impacting productivity, efficiency and adding costs to rural industries and farmers.

Despite receiving numerous submissions on the issue, a meeting of infrastructure and transport ministers last week abruptly rejected any push to lower default speed limits. They gave no explanation except to say: “No further work is being undertaken on open road default speed limits.”

Dr Johnston accused the federal government of failing to properly consider its own review of the issue.

“If you’re going to open a consultation process, the least you can do is see that through and weigh the evidence and see what the experts have contributed to that consultation. But none of that groundwork was done,” she said.

In an open letter to parliament this month, the ACRS wrote: “The question is straightforward: shouldn’t the starting point for the conversation be a safe speed, rather than one that kills?

“Countries with the best road safety records have answered yes, and their results speak for themselves. Lower default limits on high-risk roads do not grind nations to a halt. They save lives, prevent life-altering injuries and reduce the billions of dollars that road trauma costs every year.”

For Linda Canfield, who painted a heart on the road outside her home where her daughter was killed, it’s an issue that deserves more serious consideration.