By Charlene Macaulay
A notorious St Albans intersection, the site of five major car accidents in as many years, is undergoing a $200,000 safety makeover.
The Sunshine Avenue and Main Road East intersection is to get new, more prominent traffic lights, while the speed limit along Sunshine Avenue between the Western Ring Road and Ashton Avenue has already been dropped from 70km/h to 60km/h.
Western metropolitan region MP Bernie Finn says the safety works will improve visibility at the intersection for drivers and give them more time to stop or slow down as they approach.
“In many instances, there have been crashes when drivers fail to notice the traffic signals and run the red light,” Mr Finn said.
St Albans Liberal candidate Moira Deeming said five casualty crashes had been recorded at the intersection during the five years to December 31 last year, including three resulting in serious injury.
Fines Victoria figures reveal that the state government reaped more than $7.7 million in 2013-14 from drivers recorded speeding or driving through red lights on Brimbank roads. The figures show fixed speed and red light cameras in Brimbank snapped 35,661 infringements in those 12 months, with most offences occurring along the Western Ring Road southbound, near the Boundary Road exit.
Cameras on four lanes in this area alone clocked up 29,557 speeding offences.
Of the seven fixed speed and red light cameras placed across the city, only one is not located on a freeway. That camera, at the Kings Road and Melton Highway intersection at Taylors Lakes, snapped 3099 offences resulting in $687,210 of fines.
Sergeant Bill Joannidis, of the Brimbank highway patrol, said the placement of fixed speed and red light cameras was determined by collision data rather than hoon driving, with the latter also causing a lot of problems locally.
“When it comes to the location of these speed cameras, my understanding is it comes down to the collision data,” he said.
“They have to prioritise that across the whole state.”
