Bad week on roads

By Mara Pattison-Sowden
IT’S been a horror week on the roads in the Yarra Valley and none know that more so than Wandin CFA’s Rescue Unit.
Last week heralded collisions in Wandin, Seville, Woori Yallock and Coldstream, leaving the CFA team to wonder when drivers will start taking care on the roads.
Wandin CFA captain Peter Polovinka said they’d had a quiet bushfire season but this last week had been terrible on the roads.
“We went from four weeks of nothing happening to a week of four call-outs in five days,” he said.
There was nothing they could do for a young man who died after coming off his motorbike in Coldstream on Tuesday, but the team worked hard to get other crash victims out of the wreckage.
A 25-year-old man was found in his blue sedan, hanging upside down against an embankment last week after a collision in Wandin.
Two cars T-boned when a sedan driving south on Wellington Road and a vehicle driving along Clegg Road collided at about 6pm on Sunday 3 April.
The rescue team had to forcibly extricate the driver of the blue sedan from his car.
Ambulance Victoria spokesman Paul Bentley said the man’s feet had been trapped under the pedals and he had struck his head in the collision.
He was taken to The Alfred hospital in a stable condition, and police are waiting for the results of blood reports to complete their investigations.
The 22-year-old woman in the other car was assessed by paramedics but didn’t go to hospital.
Wandin CFA second lieutenant Andrew Webber said the accident was just another of a number of incidents the brigade had responded to at the intersection over the last few years.
“The council has attempted to reduce the accident frequency by installing rumble strips on Wellington Road but accidents are still occurring regularly,” he said.
There was also a five-car concertina in Seville on Wednesday morning.
The main street of Seville was turned into chaos when the five cars collided on the corner of Warburton Highway and Station Road at 7.30am on Wednesday 6 April.
A 44-year-old man was taken to Maroondah Hospital in a stable condition. Paramedics said he had experienced chest pain as a result of the driver’s side airbag inflating.
Four other people were assessed at the scene, with no injuries.