Articles by Kristy Sheridan

Victoria pays some of the highest speeding fines in the country. The Brumby government budgeted them to raise $476 million this financial year alone, so it is little wonder they have been pigeonholed by many as ‘revenue raisers’. Speed kills. There is no denying it. It would be a discredit to police officers who work to protect our roads from speeding drivers to reject speed cameras’ ability to save lives. Such as those officers in chilly 7am air in Mansfield, booking drivers speeding up to Mt Buller in ski season. Here you feel safer to be on the road because of their presence.  Yet, there are some instances where safety comes in the form of common sense.Melbourne’s Western Ring Road is a hotspot for speed cameras, and rightly so. 5 o’clock knock-off is havoc as trucks, city workers and traffic from the Westgate compete to make it home in time for the 6 o’clock news.Turning off onto the Western Ring Road from the Western Highway, many drivers inadvertently speed up several kilometers to merge. The average speed is 110 km/hour, yet the limit is 100 km/hour.By the time they can lower their speed down again, there is a speed camera waiting to get them. Risk a pile-up, or blend in safely with traffic and risk $176?An inquiry into the positioning of speed cameras to reduce fatalities is a welcome change, as many volatile sections of our roads seem to go unnoticed.Like deadly intersections, such as some of the ones in Footscray. Many are accidents waiting to happen, although I know in some cases I speak too late.Or the section of the Calder Freeway near Calder Park, where drivers illegally U-turn to the other side of the freeway to avoid early morning traffic into the city. If there was an ‘unsafe merge’ onto a freeway, this would be it.Or taxi drivers who carve up other drivers on the way out to the airports, speeding and slipping in between the left and right lanes without indicating.Or parts of the Calder Freeway where the left lane is so uneven and crumbling, that during heavy rain people are forced to drive in the right lane just to avoid slipping off.While these examples may seem Garden State or western suburbs-centric, no doubt they are a synecdoche for problems in other capital cities.  While investigating speed cameras, perhaps the government should also examine the role of tolls in reducing congestion. Tolls are traditionally a way of paying for upgraded infrastructure to ease congestion. Yet the $2 billion cost of building Citylink was repaid by tolls in late 2008. Melbourne drivers will continue to pay $1.76 (or more) each time they go through a toll until 2034, when Citylink’s contract expires and it hands control of the roads back to the Victorian state government.Yet Citylink’s company, Transurban, is French owned, with most of the money going overseas to its primarily French and Canadian shareholders.