“What the Government is now saying, or confirming, is that it has no intention of fixing dangerous roads in country Victoria.
It is that simple,” Mrs McArthur said.

“Potholes and neglect create dangerous roads and cause accidents.
Wild and unmanaged vegetation on roadsides adds to dangerous roads due to limiting visibility. It's also a fire hazard and a recipe for wildlife 'roadkill'. No surprise that wildlife, including kangaroos, wallabies, koalas and echidnas don't understand the message of 'look right, left and right again!'"

"These roadsides should be 'safe places', not wildlife corridors, bio diversity zones or conservation zones.
But none of this very basic information – understood by every country Victorian – is considered as part of the reason why accidents happen on country roads."

“For Daniel Andrews – it is much easier to blame a ‘speeding driver’ than the condition and surrounding circumstances of the country road network
For this Premier, it is always someone else’s fault.”

Mrs McArthur has condemned the Government’s plan to take two years to create a Network Safety Plan to identify which roads will get fixed and which will not and, instead, have their speed limit reduced.

“Give country and regional Victorians two weeks and they can give you a comprehensive list of every appalling road in the state. Each of these deserves to get fixed.
This is not a game of pick and choose who gets to drive on safe roads,” she said.

“For just a fraction of the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on often stupidly placed wire-rope barriers, a huge amount of actual road surface improvement could be completed.
Some roads in Western Victoria have had the speed limit progressively reduced over the last four years from 100km per hour to 40km - only due to the dangerous surface not being repaired."

The Herald Sun report also indicated that the Government will adopt ‘variable limits that change based on the conditions’.

“What this means is that one day a country road might be 80km/h, tomorrow it could be 40km/h and maybe the next it will be 50km/h.
How can anyone plan a journey around such random numbers? And what are the chances of a speed camera being placed on these roads when such speed variations are happening?
Lowering the speed limits in the country has a massive impact."

“This is not like an urban council lowering the speed limit near a school. Short stretches make little difference to overall journey time, but in rural Victoria it’s a different story. A resident living in Vite Vite , for example, who uses country roads to access Skipton would have to spend an extra 30 hours a year in their car just to do the school drop off and pick up.
This is not a road safety plan. This is an acknowledgement that it has failed country Victorians and intends to keep doing so”, Mrs McArthur said.

The Liberal Nationals have committed to investing in country roads and maintaining 100km/h limits.