Easter roads warning

A ZERO death toll over Easter is the aim of the Blessing of the Roads campaign being driven by several local governments.

In the lead-up to the busy Easter long weekend from April 2-5, drivers are reminded to be cautious and well rested when driving.

WA Local Government Association President Bill Mitchell said the road toll was lower than at the same time last year but people should not be complacent.

“It is vital we remember that even one death on our roads is too many and everyone needs to make a contribution if we are to achieve zero deaths in the long term,” he said.

The Blessing of the Roads campaign helped raise awareness about road safety in local communities.

“Blessing of the Roads brings together local roads safety partners as well as emergency service personnel to publicly bless local roads and remind road users to do the right thing no matter how long or short the journey,” Cr Mitchell said.

Several local governments will hold Blessing of the Roads ceremonies before Easter.

What everyone else is thinking

Renee

28/03/2011

I think the point is being missed. It is about creating greater awareness through different avenues, to drive home (pardon the pun) the importance of safe road use over the Easter break. Any further education and reminders are always a help and not something we should be knocking.

Anthea (Perth)

03/04/2010

This Easter weekend (as usual) there will be about 12 to 20 people killed on Australian roads, several thousand injured in vehicle accidents and a huge amount of trauma and sufferring. Any positive actions to reduce this carnage has to be applauded and supported. But "blessing of the roads" is bizarre. Invoking the "Almighty's help" is even more bizarre. What a total waste of time. Blitzing the roads with speed cameras and booze buses would be a sensible way to go.

Pete Kean

02/04/2010

Blessing the roads Anne Ottaway is an exercise in religious futility - the same as praying to any entity for anything. It makes the blessors feel good but people will keep having accidents on the roads and will keep dying. Same as blessing of the fleet - it's done every year, and there are good years for fishing and bad years for fishing. There are years with lots of tragic accidents and years with few accidents. The blessings have absolutely no impact on any of that.

rochelle S

Here's a thoght - why not have a representative of each of the popular gods "bless" the roads? That way if there's a lower-than-statistically-expected body count on Australian roads, Anne Ottaway and all the other representatives can claim credit for their god's powers. If there's a higher than expected count, each can blame it on all the other "believers of false gods" being involved in ungodly activities. Win win!

Andy jacobs

They probably have Anne Ottaway! But when the end result was the same (people still unfortunately keep dying on the roads), the Almighty's cheer squad would have kept very quiet about another failure of "The Almighty" to have acted in response to such petitions.