Seven fatalities in eight months. Why is the Western Highway near Ararat so dangerous?

On November 19, 2024, a 29-year-old man was killed in a head-on collision with a truck on the Western Highway near Buangor, southeast of Ararat.

On March 9 this year, a woman, 81, was killed along the same stretch of road.

On May 28, a 65-year-old man, a 49-year-old man and a 24-year-old woman were killed in a five-vehicle smash on the Western Highway near Armstrong, north of Ararat — an incident described as “absolute carnage” by a detective senior sergeant at the time.

On July 6, a man, 67, died on the highway. Six days later, a 43-year-old woman was killed after a vehicle and truck collided near Warrack, not far from Buangor.

Seven fatalities in eight months. Four of them within a two-kilometre radius.

Darryl Edwards saw the first of them up close.

“I was driving behind a truck,” the Ararat local said. “A vehicle came the other way in Buangor and went head on into it. Another gentleman and I went straight to the driver — and within thirty seconds to a minute, he died.”

Edwards is no stranger to death. He worked as a government undertaker for the Victorian Coroner from 2010 to 2015, and again in 2021. But this was different.

“Nothing prepares you for that,” he said.

And the horror didn’t stop there.

“Since that day, there have been another [three] fatal car crashes in Buangor,” he said. “There [have] been four in that area within one kilometre of that spot, at the railway crossing in Buangor. Plus another five major collisions where the highway has been shut due to the severity of the crashes.”

And that doesn’t include the Department of Transport’s figures from the decade leading up to December 2024. 

Over the past decade, there have been 174 crashes on the Western Highway, between Ballarat and Stawell, including 16 fatalities and 105 people seriously injured.

Edwards describes it as “Victoria’s worst black spot”.

Asked why it was such a dangerous stretch of road, he put it down to a number of possible factors including drivers losing concentration, road conditions, fatigue - “it’s three hours from Melbourne and six hours from Adelaide” — and roadway changing from two lanes to one in the leadup to a railway track crossing.

“It’s very narrow,” he said. “There’s no room for error. That’s where I witnessed my fatal crash.”

Despite recent resealing works, Edwards said the danger hasn’t eased.

“The accidents keep happening.”

Deer are compounding the problem, with several incidents involving animals causing serious crashes.

“When a deer hits a car, it could be fatal because the body of the deer tends to go into the cabin.”

A significant cause of community concern is the slow progress on the Western Highway duplication along the Ararat-Buangor section.

The state government’s initial completion date for the duplication was 2020, but in 2019 officials “significantly altered the design of the project” after members of the Aboriginal community identified two trees of cultural significance that were to be removed in the original plans. 

According to the Department of Transport, “the revised completion date will be subject to the timing of the completion of a new Cultural Heritage Management Plan”.

The delay led to a petition to fast track the works, which has been signed by more than  3,000 people. 

As a stop gap measure Edwards said the speed limit should be reduced from 100km/h to 80km/h.

But, he said, “we feel like if we say anything, it’s going on deaf ears. No one is talking about it in government”.

Victoria Police told the Brolga there had been 99 lives lost on regional roads this year, a 12.5 percent increase on the same time last year.

“We’re committed to doing everything we can to drive down trauma on our regional roads, but we can’t do this alone – we need everyone to take responsibility for their own actions behind the wheel,” police said.

“It is imperative that all road users remain alert, particularly when travelling on high-speed rural roads – a split second of inattention can be all it takes.”

Header image credit: Darryl Edwards - Truckspotting Ararat