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Tuesday 16 January 2024
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Jumpers warned about perils at the Pillars THRILL seekers are being told not to jump off the rocks into the bay at the Pillars, Mount Martha. The safety advice follows two recent incidents where jumpers have been seriously injured while attempting to jump. On Friday 12 January a persopn was airlifted to the Alfred Hosital with suspected neck injuries. One week earlier a 20-year-old man was taken to hospital with neck pain after attempting a jump and being rescued by emergency services. Just weeks before that a 12-year-old girl attempted a pin jump from the cliffs and broke both legs and her ankle. She was being filmed by her father who was watching from a boat. The Pillars is on Crown land owned by the state government and managed by Mornington Peninsula Shire Council. The mayor Cr Simon Brooks said it was a difficult situation with “no easy solutions”. “Fencing off the area didn’t work. Instead, we have improved the signage clearly warning people of the dangers of this area and closed some of the informal paths to the site,” he said. “We also introduced parking restrictions in the surrounding residential streets to make it harder for people to visit the site. These measures have vastly reduced the number of complaints we receive. “The Pillars is a fragile coastal cliff formation with changeable water conditions influenced by tides and weather. “Standing or sitting on the rock or the cliff edge poses a very high safety risk and we urge people not to enter the site.” The Pillars is within Mount Martha Foreshore Reserve and has become known around the world as a scenic spot for cliffjumping. Many residents would prefer to see the cliff fenced off to discourage summer sightseers from causing traffic congestion, walking along the Esplanade, leaving rubbish and creating a public nuisance. Liz Bell
Picture: Gary Sissons
Don’t limit speed cuts - Gill Keith Platt keith@mpnews.com.au MORNINGTON Peninsula Shire councillors are being urged to overturn their policy of only asking the state government to reduce speed limits on five or six roads a year. Cr David Gill said council’s adoption of setting such low targets was “our worst road safety decision in my time as a councillor”. His move to have no limit on approaches to the government puts him on course for a head-on clash with council officers who have said making
the requests were “too onerous with little recent reward”. Gill says Roads and Road Safety Minister Melissa Horne has used the peninsula as an example of where cutting road speed limits has led to a reduction in accidents, death and injury. At council’s first public meeting for 2024 (6 February) Gill will propose that “council rescind its position to only advocate to the state government for five or six roads a year for speed reduction consideration given road Safety Minister Melissa Horne's recent ‘government commitment to reduce speed limits on country roads’
after last year’s highest Victorian road toll in 15 years and her using the Mornington Peninsula as evidence of effective toll reduction after lower speed restrictions on over 30 dangerous roads were introduced here five years ago”. “Action is needed if the shire doesn’t want to return to having the worst road toll in Victoria,” Gill told The News. “The government’ lack of attention and neglect has been so poor that council officers convinced council last year that the effort and expense to save lives with reduced speed limits
when advocating to the state government for consideration was too onerous with little recent reward. “I believe this was our worst road safety decision in my time as a councillor.” Gill said speed limits should be aligned to match circumstances on the peninsula “and our eight million visitors each year in order to help save lives”. “We have high speed, narrow, often windy, tree lined roads around the peninsula.” Horne said road trauma was “a complex challenge and sadly the con-
tributing factors are not new – speed, not wearing a seat belt, drink and drug driving, high speed country roads, less safe older cars, multi-passenger fatalities and increasing level of travel on our roads”. In a statement issued on 29 December the state government urged Victorians to “make safety a priority … [after] a devastating year on the state’s roads”. “Data shows that lower-level drink driving and speeding, failing to obey road signs and distraction accounted for more than half of fatalities on state roads in 2023.
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