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Over the weekend, we lost 19 people on the roads. And it's all of our faults.

As the Easter weekend comes to a close, we learn the national road toll is a shocking 19 lives.

Nineteen people.

Nineteen families ruined.

Nineteen Australians who were working, laughing, relaxing with their families this time last week.

Nineteen men and women, mothers and father, aunts, uncles, grandparents and children.

Nineteen lives have been lost this weekend on our roads. Families have been torn apart; parents have been left broken.

As the Easter weekend drew to a close we learnt that the road toll was 19 over the past four days, 13 more than this time last year.

It was a national massacre. How the hell did we lose so many?

In NSW nine-year old William Kulk was travelling home from the Easter show with his 12-year old brother Daniel and his eight-year old sister Piper. The car was driven by their grandmother, and their 31-year old mother was seated in the passenger seat.

The family were returning home to their Central Coast town of Budgewoi – a drive of around an hour-and-a-half – when the car they were in ploughed into a ute which contained a 32-year old woman and her mother.

The driver’s grandmother told News Limited: “They were coming around a left bend when the car was sliding in front and there was nothing she could do but slam on the brakes. She had no time to turn the wheel.”

In South Australia there was one death – a two-year-old girl at Point Turton on Yorke Peninsula. Superintendent Bob Fauser said while it was only one death in the state, it was one death too many.

In Brisbane on Saturday afternoon a four-year old boy riding his scooter was struck by a car. He sustained head and chest injuries, and died at the scene.

Related content: We all had a role to play in Jodhi Meares accident.

Too many of these deaths are avoidable.

None of the drivers involved in any of the accidents on the weekend set out to put their own lives or anyone else’s at risk.

But those drivers could have been any one of us. We all had a role to play in the terror that played out on the roads over the Easter weekend. Think about all those times you’ve checked your phone at the lights. The time you’ve accidentally snuck over the speed limit. The moments you weren’t 100 per cent concentrating on the road because you were thinking about the 2926 things happening in your life.

The driver could have been me or you. Checking our phone, listening to the kids’ bicker in the backseat, re-programming the GPS, plugging in your iPod, flicking the station to another song, rushing from one place to the next.

We often shame the drink drivers, the ones on drugs or those unlicensed. But for those who just made a fleeting, random mistake? Their victims are relegated to collateral damage.

Let’s stop that. They aren’t collateral damage. They are victims of a road massacre.

There didn’t need to be any victims on this holiday weekend. There doesn’t have to be tears and tributes and pictures in the newspaper. There doesn’t have to be rolling coverage of the road deaths.

We can all take a moment before we drive to think, to be aware and to remember these 19 people and vow to do something to drive that number down.

Because there doesn’t need to be a “national road toll.”

There has been a GoFundMe page set up for the family of Will and Piper Kulk you can access that here. 

 

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Top Comments

Karen Cass 9 years ago

Yes there are people who do willfully stupid things, some more who make careless mistakes, even more who have 'lapses' (because that's the way human brains work folks) and even situations like below where $h!t just happens. Reducing the toll is a worthy goal but hyperbolic sentimental claptrap doesn't help. No, I am not responsible for this weekend's toll. Some times NO-ONE is responsible for an accident and witch hunting to make SOMEONE responsible doesnt help any cause.

I was recently haranged by a rural policeman for pulling right off a narrow country road, into a paddock gate entrance, in order to deal with a GPS problem. That is: off the road, out of the traffic, out of anyone's way. It's the nearest I've come to assaulting a copper, who clearly realised I'd done the right thing and had to resort to "Well don't do it again" as he left. Do the right thing and get harrassed by police or haranged by journos. You can't win, can you?


guest 9 years ago

Had I not read this today I might have ridiculed like some other commentators.
Yesterday I was driving to the supermarket in the rain, slowly, with my younger brother in the car. I have driven on this road hundreds possibly thousands of times. I was not distracted, no phone, no radio, gps not even a conversation.
Lost control of the car almost hit an oncoming truck and cars behind it. Slid off into an embankment and luckily car didn't roll!
I was driving responsibly and slowly to the conditions in an area I know well. Accidents happen so fast and we often forget to be vigilant
Stay safe xx