As the death toll on South Australia’s roads continues to climb in 2023, South Australians are calling for changes to be made to the state’s regional road network. (Image supplied: Kelsie Moyle-Read)
By Jessica Dempster | @dempsterjess_
Following another accident-filled weekend on South Australian roads, 19-year-old Megan Quick from Adelaide felt compelled to make a change.
On May 27, Quick created a petition via change.org calling for the South Australian Government to make improvements to the state’s country roads.
The tipping point for Quick was the death of 19-year-old Poppy Croizer from Keith, who lost her life in a three-vehicle crash on the Dukes Highway on Friday, May 26.
With family in Keith and having spent a lot of her life growing up in the town, Quick was immediately saddened and concerned when her mother told her the news that a fellow Keith girl had been killed.
Alongside Croizer, three other people lost their lives on South Australian roads within the span of 24 hours.
That weekend’s events brought the South Australian road toll up to 57 compared to the 33 lives lost at the same time last year.
“When I heard Poppy’s death was the 57th so far this year, I just thought to myself, ‘How does it almost double within 12 months?’” Quick says.
“I spent about five hours just thinking about what I could do, and the best thing I came up with [was] to start a petition about country road safety and how desperately [it needs] to be improved.
“[The petition] can’t bring Poppy or anyone else back, but it can prevent it from happening again to someone else’s friend, daughter, son, mother, father or partner.”
Within two weeks, the petition had over 6000 signatures. It now sits at 6500.
Quick says she wasn’t expecting the petition to “blow up as much as it has”.
“At first, after I posted it to my social media, I would check the signage every hour or so. The numbers got bigger and bigger. One night, I didn’t check it, and when I opened my petition, it had over 1000 signs. It blew my mind and I started to cry. I read every single comment and still do,” she says.
Quick said she hopes her petition will inspire a change in all country roads across the state.
“I want this petition to reach the government, to make them realise Adelaide doesn’t care about Sam Smith concerts or, as great as it was for the state, spending multi-millions on the AFL Gather Round. The safety of citizens must be first priority. That involves fixing our roads.”
According to research by the Australian Road Safety Foundation (ARFS), deaths on rural roads accounted for 68 per cent of last year’s South Australian road toll.
The ARFS says that “unpreparedness” and “bad behaviour” are the main factors putting South Australian lives at risk when they drive on country roads.
However, many members of rural and regional South Australia, as well as metro travellers passing through, take issue with the condition of the state’s country roads.
In a press release by the Royal Automobile Association of South Australia (RAA) published in March, RAA Senior Manager of Safety and Infrastructure Charles Mountain says the condition of South Australia’s road network is a common issue raised by RAA members and contributes to road safety concerns.
Mountain says the RAA’s priorities include the duplication of several key highways across the state, including Dukes Highway on which Croizer and countless others have lost their lives.
Mountain says duplication would improve road safety, as it would give travellers a safer method of overtaking slower-moving traffic; this would also hopefully reduce the amount of high-speed and head-on collisions common along that stretch of road.
Quick hopes that the government will take the concerns and wellbeing of South Australians into consideration and make the needed changes to ensure all travellers get home safely.
“Poppy doesn’t deserve to be remembered or known as the 57th road toll death; she deserves to be remembered by what she loved, her friends, her family, her passions, her love of life,” Quick says.
As of June 2023, the current number of road fatalities in South Australia is 59.
On June 14, 2023, member of the South Australian Legislative Council, Benjamin Hood, mentioned Quick’s petition in his address to the council about improving the conditions of the state’s regional roads.
“I want to assure our local communities that their outcry has been heard,” Hood says.
“As a state we must do better to protect those using our road networks. Current campaigns are insufficient at reducing the road death toll.”
Hood says the South Australian Government should start implementing defensive driving courses and stricter education for learning and provisional drivers.
“Enough is enough of the poor standard of many regional roads. Enough is enough of losing more lives, especially young ones, on South Australian roads,” he says.
Hood says statistics show young drivers from regional SA are three times more likely to die or be seriously injured in a road crash; a significant portion of these statistics are people travelling for education or to access services not available in their region.
“Teenagers and young people should not have to face their friends’ funerals. Parents should never be confronted with their child’s death due to driving,” Hood says.
“We need a targeted approach to reduce these statistics and implement proactive and preventative messages where current methods fall short.
“While SA continues its upward trajectory [in road deaths], other states are declining.
“We must ask ourselves, ‘What are we doing wrong, and what can we do to fix it?’
“The loss of 59 lives, is 59 lives too many.”
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