One teenager has died and another is fighting for his life after a “totally avoidable” fall off a cliff on the road east of Victoria.
Key points:
- An 18-year-old man has died and three others have been seriously injured in an accident near a remote tourist town in Gippsland
- Police say a friend of the group saw his vehicle sliding off the road down the cliff
- Locals say they have focused on installing a security barrier, five years after an almost identical accident
Four teenagers were returning on Sunday from a day trip by car to the tourist town of Walhalla in Gippsland when the vehicle they were in slid down a cliff, fell 21 meters and landed upside down.
An 18-year-old man from Drouin died at the scene, and a 19-year-old man was taken to hospital with life-threatening injuries, where he remains in critical condition.
Two more passengers were seriously injured but not seriously injured.
Detective Sergeant Daryl Out of the Major Collision Investigation Unit rushed to the scene on Tuesday to investigate the cause of the crash.
“It’s just awful,” he said.
Residents of the remote village of Walhalla are suffering the loss of a young life. (ABC Gippsland: Kerrin Thomas)
He told ABC Victoria Statewide Drive that another friend was still in a separate vehicle and immediately called emergency services.
He said initial investigations found the driver’s mistake was a likely cause of the crash at the 40-kilometer-per-hour corner.
But he also said speed did not seem to be a factor in the crash.
“While we haven’t been able to determine how fast the vehicle was going, it doesn’t seem excessive,” he said.
“The road is cut into the steep hill, so daylight disappears very quickly, leaving roads fresh and wet.”
“It makes us so crazy”
Walhalla resident and Baw Baw Shire Mayor Michael Leaney offered his condolences to the family of the deceased passenger and wished the injured occupants a speedy recovery.
Councilor Leaney told the ABC that in 2017 the premises had been concentrated on the installation of security barriers after an accident almost identical on the same corner.
“It is possible that this driver has just reached the bend, hit the brakes, got stuck and just slipped over the edge,” he said.
“Unfortunately. It’s not the road that’s really the problem, it’s the unevenness. Because there are no barriers, these low-speed accidents end in tragedy.”
Residents say they were told that the 75-centimeter border between the bitumen and the drop would be too difficult to install a safety barrier.
“Despite the engineering challenges this area could face, given the tragedy that occurred yesterday, the call now is to put a barrier in place so that a tragic event like this does not happen again,” Leaney said. dit.
“It makes us so crazy that this has happened before, there have been requests to fix it, and yet no action has been taken.”
The ABC has contacted Victoria Regional Roads for a response.
Posted 2 hours, 2 hours ago, Monday, June 20, 2022 at 8:38 AM, updated 1 hour, 1 hour ago, Monday, June 20, 2022 at 9:41 AM