Road Trauma Support Services Victoria provides 'a way to make good out of something tragic'

Ms Dine shared her condolences and commented on the post, saying: "I'm just glad it wasn't you".

A few hours later she found out the woman who had been killed in the crash, in the western Victorian town of Stawell, was her mother.

A drug-affected and fatigued driver had fallen asleep at the wheel and crashed into Ms Dine's stepfather's car.

Kate Cassells, Ms Dine's mother, died and her husband Geoffrey Cassells was seriously injured.

He will spend the rest of his life in full-time care.

The driver, who was high on the drug ice, was sentenced to nearly three years in jail.

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Ms Dine said her mother's death was "wasteful and senseless".

"It was so unnecessary," she said.

For Ms Dine, who lives in Melbourne's outer west, the crash "started a life journey for me learning to deal and cope with the unexpected death of my mother".

"The weeks and months that followed the crash were really horrific and had significant impacts not just on me and my family but on the Harrow community where my mum and stepdad lived," she said.

It is an experience, sadly, increasing numbers of country Victorian families will share, with the number of fatalities on rural roads increasing, particularly in the state's west, in the past year.

Victoria's road toll leapt by 24 per cent from a low of 214 deaths in 2018 to 263 fatalities in 2019.

Of those 263 deaths, 145 occurred in country Victoria, 90 of them in the west of the state alone.

Ms Dine now shares her story with driving offenders through court-ordered sessions with Road Trauma Support Services Victoria (RTSSV).

Ms Dine reached out to the service and volunteered to tell her story.

She said it gave her "a real way to make some sense and good out of something that is really tragic".

At the start of some sessions, the offenders come in "full of bravado" and are "just there to tick a box", she said.

"But I guarantee you there is a monumental shift after they hear our stories. You can almost see it, it's like a physical realisation," Ms Dine said.

The impact of road trauma isn't felt only by family and friends of the person killed.

When a crash has happened and patients are on their way to hospital, Warrnambool's emergency department head Tim Baker said workers often rushed to check their phones to make sure it isn't a loved one en route.

"When someone is injured on the road and you hear they are coming, everyone disappears for about two minutes," he said.

"Because it's fairly small, it's not uncommon for someone in the emergency department to know the person that is coming in. That creates an extra level of stress."

Dr Baker, who is also the associate director at Deakin University's Centre for Rural Emergency Medicine, said the path to recovery after a serious crash was often long and painful, sometimes taking years.

"For everyone who dies there are a huge amount more who are terribly injured," he said.

Dr Baker said the reality of being in a car crash was a "terrifying experience" if you were seriously injured.

"You are in pain. Your clothes will be cut off and you will be frightened," he said.

"You don't want to be that person. There is the chance of permanent disability. People can have spinal injuries and they'll have ongoing treatment for the rest of their lives."

Dr Baker is frank about people speeding on rural roads.

"We don't see people who are speeding. They don't come to us because they don't survive," he said.

Alcohol is also a significant factor. In the past five years, close to one in five drivers and riders who lost their lives in Victoria had a blood alcohol concentration greater than 0.05.

Dr Baker said alcohol often also played a part in serious injury crashes in rural areas.

"Most of the people that come in are intoxicated," he said. "If you are drinking heavily you put yourself at so much more risk."

He said family members were also often very distressed if a person came into the hospital seriously injured and had to be stabilised before being flown to a Melbourne hospital for further treatment.

"They all want to get in the car and drive through the back blocks for four hours at 2am," he said.

"That's not going to be a good idea. They are stressed and tired. We worry then that they will have an accident as well."

SES Wodonga deputy controller Lisa Wise has never forgotten attending her first road fatality, an accident in which an off-duty police officer was decapitated.

"It was a fairly horrific incident," Ms Wise, who has been a volunteer for more than 30 years, said.

The SES is the largest provider of road rescues in Australia, and Victoria has 103 road rescue units.

Ms Wise works at a school and has been to road crashes involving students or past pupils.

One scene she attended included a student who was the driver of the car. A passenger had died and others were seriously injured.

"When you know the person, it's one of the jobs that holds a memory for a while," she said.

"But, you are focused on the task at hand when you are at the job. I want to be there because I hope that someone would be there for me."

The SES has peer support programs for volunteers to talk about the traumas they witness.

There's also a 24/7 support service for SES members and outreach to family of volunteers so they can support their loved ones.

"Memories and flashbacks, fatigue, mood swings can go on for a week while you process what you have been to," Ms Wise said.

"Once I became a parent, going to incidents with young children became harder to process. Adults can sometimes make poor choices but children don't have a choice of where they are."

She has been to crashes where there have been car seats in the back of the vehicle.

"There's always that worry: 'Where is the child?'" she said.

Peter Jenkins, a South-west Victorian Mobile Intensive Care Ambulance paramedic, believes the growth in the road toll is due to a combination of factors.

"It's probably a lack of understanding of the roads in the area, not matching speed with the road conditions and not being well prepared to drive by being affected by alcohol, substances or fatigue," he said.

He says all fatalities and serious injuries on the state's roads are "enormously tragic".

But one in particular has always stuck in his memory.

He attended a head-on collision in which a young woman's car was hit by another vehicle which was overtaking and was on the wrong side of the road.

"As a result of the force of the crash, the woman was extensively trapped and had severe injuries," he recalled.

"During the course of trying to extract her she passed away before we could get her out. She was such a young person at the beginning of her adult life. It was an absolute tragedy not just for her, but for all her friends and family."

Like Ms Wise, Mr Jenkins says says working in a regional area means he and his colleagues could know the people they treat at crash scenes.

"It weighs on your mind. It definitely makes it harder if you have a personal connection," he said.

Chris Harrison, the education services manager for Road Trauma Support Services Victoria, said many people think road trauma is something that won't affect them.

"Our volunteer stories challenge this complacency," she said. "Stories involve us in personal, emotional ways, ... this emotional power is the key to igniting action and bringing about a change in beliefs and attitudes."

Road trauma awareness seminars such as those in which Ms Dine shares her story are delivered in conjunction with the Magistrates' Court of Victoria to traffic offenders as part of sentencing options.

Ms Harrison said 88 per cent of participants had not committed any traffic offences since attending the program.

One participant said it was hard to hear the volunteer's story as they realised they "could have been that person who took a family member's life away".

Another admitted "you don't know the impact it has on families, the driver and victims".

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