Trauma takes its toll.

By Natalie Croxon and Olivia Shying

The constable on his first night shift, the young graduate paramedic, the veteran emergency department doctor who has seen it all, the distraught parents. These are the many hidden faces of the road toll.

The road toll has been quartered since 1971, when it stood at 1061, but this year - for the first time in a decade - the toll is expected to eclipse 300.

Every crash, even those that might be briefs in page 10 of the paper, impacts many people.

This series, Trauma takes its toll, will explore serious collisions from all sides and what we can do to bring down the toll and get #homesafe.

Moving forward, looking back

In 2016 we drive safer cars than ever before, we have airbags and seatbelts, AEB brakes.

There is better education and awareness, better roads, better enforcement technology and new legislation.

There is alcohol testing and drug testing and we all know if we drink and drive we are a bloody idiot. But people continue to die on our roads.

As of Monday, September 16, 2016, 19 per cent more people had been killed on Victoria’s roads compared to the same time last year.

Acting Senior Sergeant Mick McCrann

Police are frustrated by this senseless loss of life.

Bendigo Highway Patrol’s Acting Senior Sergeant Mick McCrann says there are a number of factors that might have contributed to this trend, including an increasing number of cars on the road, an ageing and growing population, and the comfort of our cars removing us from the physical sensations of travelling at speed.

He believes our attention to the roads - or lack thereof - is probably putting people at risk the most.

“We’re just not switched on enough, and that’s probably the biggest factor, of all of them,” Acting Senior Sergeant McCrann said.

My angel: John Maher keeps a photo of his daughter Carmen on his keyring which he takes wherever he goes

Picture: Kate Healy

Whole life ahead: At 18 Carmen Maher had her whole life ahead of her, that was cut short when she was killed in a car crash.

Ballarat man John Maher knows more than anyone the true price of fatigue. It cost his daughter her life.

18-year-old Carmen was making a simple trip she had completed hundreds of times before.

This time, on November 18 1995, she fell asleep at the wheel, ran off the road at 100 kilometres an hour and struck a tree.

John and his wife Ange were out the front of their Bendigo home putting things in the car when a vehicle pulled up.

John turned around expecting it to be Carmen. Instead it was a young policeman.

He said Carmen was dead.

“I couldn’t comprehend what I had just been told. It’s just too much to take in,” John said.

“Being told you have lost a child is so final, so dramatic and it leaves you with that empty feeling.”

Devastated: The Maher family have lived without Carmen for more than 20 years but they will never get over the loss of their daughter.

Acting Sergeant McCrann has seen the pain parents, like the Mahers, face, and says the road toll can be cut drastically if motorists pay heed to the rules.

“Speed’s a factor in every crash, because the car’s moving, but if cars were sticking to the speed limit more often, or travelling at a lower speed because conditions had changed, we’d get less injuries and less fatalities,” Acting Senior Sergeant McCrann said.

“If people stayed off their phones, and obeyed the lights and signs, we’d just have less accidents.”

For two years after his daughter’s death John was left feeling sorry for himself. Then a tragedy struck another family John did not know.

“There were four young boys killed in crash. That was a catalyst for me to go and do something about it,” John said.

“I stopped feeling sorry for myself. I started going to schools and the telling the students how we lost Carmen and telling them if they do this ... what they will do to their family.

“How their family will have to try and live without the most important person in the world. How the family will have to try to live without them for the rest of their lives.”

John has been to hundreds of schools spreading Carmen’s message. He tells them about his beautiful, vivacious daughter. He shows them the picture that he keeps on his keyring and he tells of the heartbreak and guilt Carmen’s older sister Michelle felt.

Michelle was the last person to see Carmen that morning. Carmen was tired and her head was rested on the bench.

Michelle said if she turned the radio up and wound the windows down she’d be ok.

For a while Michelle did the school talks with John, but soon it became too much. For John it’s something he will keep doing until the road toll hits zero.

All those who have felt the impact of road trauma - from the police investigating crashes and the tow truck drivers removing the resulting wreckage, to the loved ones of people lost and those whose life paths have been skewed by their injuries - are pleading with people to take care so they and others can arrive home safe.

“Road trauma is horrific, it’s really really serious, and the business of investigating it has a toll,” Acting Senior Sergeant McCrann said.

“And for people out there that are affected by it, it can totally devastate them, it can change their lives.”

John feels what he is doing is making a difference. It is making people aware that the road toll impacts everyone.

Carmen’s Road Safety Presentation page has close to 10,000 followers. School students message John on that page.

The most heartbreaking messages come at 1am in the morning.

Students who have lost their loved ones pour their heart out to John and tell him how much Carmen’s story has resonated with them.

“Every time I look into the eyes of the school students I see them looking back at me and soaking up Carmen's story,” John said.

“I know when these students leave my road safety presentation they are safer drivers on the road.

“They understand what we have lost and they understand what their families will lose should they kill themselves in a car crash.”

The road toll horrifies John. He can’t believe it is rising.

He says road authorities need to hone in on key contributing factors including drugs, distraction and fatigue.

Acting Senior Sergeant McCrann says drivers need to realise that police hand out speed fines, and conduct drug and alcohol tests to stop people from taking fatal risks.

“And that’s the part that’s hard for people to understand, is we need to enforce those things, because the more people we can get out there doing the right thing, there is a significant reduction in the amount of trauma that I then have to deal with, because at the end of the day I go home to my family too, and I take some of that trauma with me,” he said.

The safety presentations given John a purpose - but they make him feel that Carmen’s death was not in vain.

“I’m the lucky one - doing these presentations keeps Carmen in my life,” John said.

“Besides, Carmen has a job to do, and that’s to make sure that everyone is a safe road user.”

Despite the road toll nudging upwards in recent years, Acting Senior Sergeant McCrann refuses to rule out the possibility of zero deaths and serious injuries - but he says every road user needs to contribute to road safety.