Road trauma to be addressed at Cranbrook Road Safety Conference

The consequences of a lack of road safety sadly affects many families in the Great Southern.

Up to the start of November, eight lives had already been lost on the region’s roads this year.

The free annual Cranbrook Road Safety Conference will take place this month in a bid to improve awareness about road safety and save lives. The event brings together people from across the region to share the latest road safety initiatives and discuss what more can be done.

Shire of Cranbrook chief executive Greg Blycha said that by working together and reinforcing safety messages, the community could reduce road fatalities.

“Unfortunately road trauma continues to be a major issue across the whole community with many people directly or indirectly impacted by road crashes,” he said.

“It is only by working together that we will be able to reduce this impact so learning about what is being successful in other areas and what is being done locally is very important.

“Road safety is a worldwide problem that unfortunately adversely affects many people including those in the Great Southern and it is only by all working together that we can help to reduce these impacts and save lives on our roads.”

The Great Southern includes 12 local governments, with 3212km of sealed roads and 10,159km of unsealed roads.

The conference will have speakers covering topics such as TransafeWA’s WA Safety Truck project, a fatigue safety project being implemented in the South West, and RAC’s Regional Road Safety Package.

Mr Blycha said it was important to remind drivers that this was a busy time of year on the roads with harvest gearing up and summer weeks away.

“At this time it is even more important that we all just slow down and share the road respectfully,” he said.

The conference will take place from 9.30am to 3pm on November 26 at the Cranbrook Sporting Complex.