As the officer in charge of the Yorke Mid North Highway Patrol, Sergeant Tristan Graham has experienced first-hand the impacts road trauma has on regional communities, not only in his role as a first responder, but as a member of such a community himself.
Based at Kadina, with a team which operates out of Kadina, Port Pirie and Peterborough police stations, Sergeant Graham is involved with all aspects of road safety policing, from high visibility preventative measures, to covert operations targeting drink and drug driving, speeding and any other behaviours which put lives at risk on the road.
In his work, Sergeant Graham has seen the full gamut of reasons – and excuses – as to why people may engage in these types of behaviours behind the wheel, which sadly, sometimes result in a far worse outcome than a fine and a few demerit points.
“It’s not a right to drive, it’s a privilege to have a license, and I know most police are in the same boat, we’re quite happy to take that privilege away from people that don’t deserve it, and make the community and our roadways safer for the people that actually take it seriously and want to get where they’re going safely,” Sergeant Graham said.
With many thousands of kilometres of roads in the region covered by his patrol, Sergeant Graham said speeding is at the top of the list in terms of negative driver behaviours he and his team regularly encounter.
“The common theme is generally speed…people get distracted whilst they’re driving, especially when they’re on their long trips… And if they’re not using cruise control or paying attention, then speeds creep,” he said.
“Or, unfortunately, on the other side of it we’ve got people that just don’t seem to care and think that they can drive at whatever speed they want, putting themselves and the rest of the community at risk.”
In regional communities, drink and drug driving is also a significant issue, Sergeant Graham observed.
“Drink-driving specifically, within smaller communities… it just doesn’t seem to matter where, wherever there’s a hotel or alcohol is available, people seem to still be in that, ‘it’s okay to drink-drive’ mentality within the rural communities unfortunately,” he said.
Sergeant Graham said it is particularly people in middle age and beyond who exhibit old-school attitudes that no longer pass the pub test.
“When they’re stopped they say, ‘this is the country, this is how we’ve always done it’, or ‘I’ve been doing it for 50 years’, or the old one, ‘oh well, I’m just on a dirt road. I’m just gonna drive around the corner to get home’,” he said.
“…Unfortunately a lot of members of the community still accept that behaviour and they don’t hold it to account.”
The ramifications of people not holding themselves or their friends or family members accountable in those crucial moments before they get behind the wheel can be dire, with the ripples of serious road trauma being felt right across communities, including amongst those who are first to respond.
“Any serious injury crash or fatality just has a significant effect across rural communities for many years,” Sergeant Graham said.
“And most of them are easily preventable if people just took their time, paid attention and just focused on the one thing that they are doing, which is driving.”
