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Western Victorians are calling for the main road between Melbourne and Adelaide to be urgently repaired.
Key points:
- People who use the Western Highway say it's dangerous and full of potholes
- A woman who lost her husband and daughter to a car crash says the road needs urgent repairs
- The Victorian government says it's spent tens of millions on upgrading the highway
Joshua Whateley frequently travels up and down the Western Highway from Ballarat to Buangor for work.
He said the road can be dangerous.
"There's a whole bunch of potholes and every time you're driving on the road you've either got to dodge them or you hit them," Mr Whateley said.
"I've hit them probably around five times just going back home after work."
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)He said it has been a problem for years.
"It's been an ongoing thing from when the freeway works happened to now, between Beaufort and Ballarat.
"It's just been deteriorating over that time … it's been an issue for a good five years.
Mr Whateley also said he thinks the barriers and concrete give way signs that have been installed are too close to the road, especially as the speed limit is 110 kph.
'It was all taken away from me'
Kristine McMillan lost her husband and daughter to a car crash on the Western Highway nearly four years ago.
She said she just wants the road to be made safer.
"I would just like to see the road get fixed so that what happened to my family doesn't happen to anybody else," Ms McMillan said.
"It's rather sad but it basically means that I no longer got my husband and daughter and I live on my own.
"It was all taken away from me."
She said they died because of a 'shocking bit of road' near Beaufort, west of Ballarat.
"I don't go down there anymore, for obvious reasons," she said.
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)Repairs underway
According to the state government, the Western Highway is one of the state's 'highest-risk roads' where there have been more than 150 crashes between Ballarat and Stawell, including 18 fatalities and 94 people seriously injured, in the past decade.
In a statement, a government spokesperson said:
"We know how important having access to safe and reliable roads is for regional Victorian communities – they're the connections that people rely upon to access employment, education and recreation," it read.
"That's why we've invested heavily in regional road maintenance, including $72 million into western Victorian roads.
"This investment has seen crews rebuild, repair and resurface 485 kilometres of the region's roads during the latest blitz— including sections of the Western Highway around Horsham and Rosebery."
Work on flexible safety barriers and guard rails on the highway between Ballarat and Beaufort started in March are nearing completion.