VIC:Road toll soars 21 ahead of 2009

AAP General News (Australia)
08-01-2010
VIC:Road toll soars 21 ahead of 2009

MELBOURNE, Aug 1 AAP - Two men have died in separate crashes on Melbourne roads on
Sunday, spiking the road toll to 21 more than at the same time last year.

The latest fatality took to six the number deaths on Victorian roads since Friday.

Shortly before 5pm (AEST) on Sunday, a Ford Falcon wagon left the Princes Freeway at
Laverton North, in Melbourne's southwest, and struck a pole, police said.

Paramedics fought to save the man, thought to have been in his 30s, but he died at the scene.

Around three hours earlier, a 40-year-old man died when his Holden Crewman utility
left Wattletree Road at Eltham, in the city's northeast, and struck a pole.

Eltham police have appealed for witnesses.

On Saturday afternoon, an 82-year-old man was killed and three people were hurt when
a sedan and a wagon collided at the intersection of the Calder Freeway and Fogartys Gap
Road at Ravenswood South, near Bendigo.

The sedan was entering the freeway when the collision occurred.

The dead man was a passenger in the sedan.

The driver, a 68-year-old woman, was taken to Bendigo Hospital with non-life threatening
injuries.

Two women in the wagon, aged 66 and 55, were taken to the same hospital for treatment.

A woman was killed and two people were badly hurt in a two-car smash at an intersection
at Cowwarr, near Traralgon, in the Latrobe Valley, about 5.15pm on Friday.

And a 17-year-old boy driving a stolen Holden sedan with a cancelled learner's permit
and his passenger, a woman in her 20s, died instantly when their car struck a pole on
St Georges Road in North Fitzroy early on Friday.

The fatalities lifted Victoria's annual road toll to 193, compared with 172 at the
same time last year.

AAP jrd/it

KEYWORD: TOLL VIC

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