Deputy Commissioners and Assistant Commissioners with road policing responsibility from across the country are coming together today (Wednesday 10 July) to participate in road policing forum in Victoria.
Requested jointly by South Australia Commissioner Grant Stevens and the Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton, the one-day forum will be co-chaired by South Australia Police (SAPOL) Deputy Commissioner Linda Williams and Victoria Police Deputy Commissioner Wendy Steendam.
The forum has been called as a direct response to the challenging year Australia is having on the roads and will allow police jurisdictions to discuss current challenges and short term solutions.
“While we are regularly in touch with other police jurisdictions, we needed to do something in the short term to try and address the horror year on the roads,” SAPOL Deputy Commissioner Williams said.
“The best way to have this conversation quickly and effectively is to get the key people for road policing in a room together and workshop the issues and potential solutions.”
Police will look at current road trauma trends, road users most at risk and what adjustments can be applied to the road policing models.
VICPOL’s Deputy Commissioner Steendam said that this year most police jurisdictions from across the country were seeing a rise in the number of people losing their lives on the road.
“Both Victoria and South Australia are having a particularly tragic year on the road for 2019. In Victoria alone when compared to last year more than 55 additional people have not come home to their families,” Deputy Commissioner Steendam said.
“We see the benefit in all coming together to talk about the current trends and to see what else can be done as a direct response to this significant increase in fatalities.”
The forum will also allow police to hear key learnings from other jurisdictions and discuss how they can be applied in their own state.
South Australia has recorded 61 lives lost on the state’s roads compared to 38 at the same time last year. In Victoria there have been 161 lives lost in 2019, 57 more than this time last year.
