The death of a widely respected motorcyclist who was killed after hitting a pothole has prompted urgent calls to fix Victoria’s roads.<\/p>\n
Peter “Tiki” Mason, a 71-year-old rider from Ballarat, died at the scene after losing control on the Western Highway, near Trawalla Rd west of Ballarat on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Mason was president of the Eureka Social Riders Club and a widely respected member of the Victorian motorcycle community.<\/p>\n
In a flood of tributes posted to social media, Mason was remembered as someone who valued respect and made a lasting impression on those he met.<\/p>\n
Another motorcycle group based in Colac, the Mutiny Mob Social Club, said Mr Mason’s death came as a complete shock.<\/p>\n
“Only days ago, we were sharing a great weekend, plenty of laughs and good times together,” the club said in a statement.<\/p>\n
“Now we are struggling to comprehend that he is gone.”<\/p>\n
While an investigation has been launched into the crash, the incident has revived concerns about the state of Victoria’s public roads.<\/p>\n
The Victorian Motorcycle Council has been raising concerns for more than a decade.<\/p>\n
Chairman of the advocacy group Rob Salvatore said potholes, questionable repairs and substandard surfaces had made riding less safe and enjoyable.<\/p>\n
“Safer motorcycling relies on the condition of the roads, and poor conditions can impact the safety of the rider in very detrimental ways,” Salvatore said.<\/p>\n
The conditions have forced riders to adjust their routines, with some older people refusing to ride at night, Salvatore said.<\/p>\n
“Something good should come out of something so tragic,” he said. <\/p>\n
A report from the Victorian Auditor-General on Wednesday found 48% of the state road network was in poor or very poor condition, up from 39% in 2021.<\/p>\n
Examining more than 23,000km of roads, it characterised their overall condition as “deteriorating”.<\/p>\n
With a state election looming in November, Victoria’s Labor government and opposition have committed to delivering road repairs.<\/p>\n
Labor’s vision includes an additional AU$300 million (NZ$370.4 million) to fix 500,000 potholes by the end of January, aided by delayed infrastructure spending and the work of prisoners. <\/p>\n
Premier Ben Carroll, who was heckled about potholes at an unrelated press conference on Friday, said the “buck does stop with us”. <\/p>\n
“I know road conditions aren’t good enough,” he said in a statement, citing his government’s pothole repair targets and plans to bring road maintenance back in-house.<\/p>\n
Carroll described Sunday’s crash as a “tragic loss of life”, adding his thoughts were with the rider’s loved ones.<\/p>\n
The state Liberal-National coalition meanwhile has pledged $5 billion over four years to plug one million potholes.<\/p>\n
Victorian Nationals leader Danny O’Brien said Sunday’s “tragedy” highlighted the need for immediate action to avoid further deaths. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The death of a widely respected motorcyclist who was killed after hitting a pothole has prompted urgent calls…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":600420,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1081,85,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-600419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-accident","tag-australia","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=600419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/600420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}