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00:00Nick Cole has been a volunteer at the Darlington CFA Brigade for 50 years. He'll show us how poor
00:21road conditions are endangering emergency workers, delaying response times and contributing to more
00:27call outs. Now this bit of road along here when I'm driving in my car and probably in the truck will
00:38do the same I tend to drive from about here I drive down the middle of the road because you can see
00:42all all the potholes which you hit in the in the car and the truck and it just flips you around and
00:51it's the same when we get up here around the corner this bit of car rid of road so I drive down the
00:58middle I'm doing now 85 kilometers an hour and it's if you're on the way to an emergency you want to be
01:07but you can't you just can't do it it's not safe and especially when you've got people in the back
01:12and things like that it's it's just not not very good at all. You probably would but you've got to
01:20you've what you're watching here and you've got to watch up there so you can't do everything that's
01:24the thing and they and they say you've got to the roads have nothing to do with the with the
01:30accidents that happen I would I would tend to argue the other way around because you I'm looking a lot
01:36just here just in 30 40 meters in front of me you can see this this bit of road is just not good
01:42and the truck yeah the truck's wandering a little bit not too bad but if I was doing my full 100
01:47kilometers an hour I think that I'd be really busy hanging onto it it's just not good
01:56sometimes you've got no option you have to hit the holes
02:05because there's trucks or cars or whatever coming out of the way and you just can't
02:09can't avoid them you have to crash through them so it's it's very very dangerous as far as I'm concerned
02:16Nick goes on to say that German tourists had told him southwest roads particularly near the
02:2312 apostles were the worst they'd ever seen recently Chinese tourists were even warned about the road
02:29conditions on the Great Ocean Road before they even arrived so just how
02:35how bad are they let's see how I fared at a hundred kilometers
02:39you know you saw what happened when we drove along that road at a hundred kilometers an hour it was
03:03really rough you have to concentrate you can't can't be answering the radio or doing anything
03:09else that's going on in the cabin as I said to you in the truck when we're driving along you can see
03:13the conditions of the road you're driving along looking at the road rather than looking further in
03:18front to see what's coming so you're not you're not observing the the the overall condition of
03:24what's happening you're not observing whether there's a side road and someone's coming along
03:28every country person will say all the money is being spent in Melbourne we're not getting anything
03:33out here we're just not getting anything out here we're treated like second-class citizens our roads
03:40need money into maintenance and they need money into repair this is federal member for one and Dan
03:49Tien roads are a top election issue I've spoken to to Nicole and as a CFA volunteer myself have been in
03:59trucks and yeah it's very difficult especially when you've got a full load of water it's very hard on
04:07the trucks and your bands bounce up and down and you've got to be concentrating and for our you know
04:13tourist sector in particular things like the Great Ocean Road you've got to make sure you
04:18constantly are upgrading and maintaining those key tourist roads because if you don't then the
04:26tourists will look to go elsewhere ultimately risky driving behavior has also been blamed by police for
04:35several deaths on southwest roads this year Port Ferry man Jordan Lockett saw drivers swerve around
04:41potholes during his early morning walk along the Princess Highway to Warrnambool
04:48this all has residents wondering how many other deaths need to occur before something permanent finally changes