At the May Meet and Mingle we welcomed John Weinert from Road Safe North East as our guest speaker. John, who lives in Yarrawonga, spoke to us on Car Safety and Older Drivers.

There were a number of small but important points that he told us about. These included the fact that leaving your parking lights on while driving was the simplest but safest thing you can do to increase your visibility to other drivers.  John suggested choosing a white or yellow car so that you are more visible and also to choose the biggest car that you are comfortable with, as this will protect you in case of an accident.

On defensive driving John mentioned that the safest way to do a right-hand turn was at traffic lights. He also mentioned planning your trip for perhaps the middle of the day when there is less traffic. John mentioned that some older drivers feel uncomfortable driving after dark, and if this was the case to avoid driving then. He also suggested that some drivers feel better just driving around Benalla when they are getting older as they know the roads and feel more in control.

John said it was important to notify Vic Roads about certain chronic illnesses so that Vic Roads could put a sticker on the back of your licence, and this would then satisfy Insurance requirements. Finally, John suggested handing in your licence when deterioration of eyesight or illness made driving difficult for the Individual.

The Guest Speaker at the June Meet and Mingle on Wednesday 18th June at 10am in Room 1 will be Eric Nash, Director of the Benalla Art Gallery. Eric will speak on the renovations which are commencing at the Benalla Art Gallery in the near future. All Welcome.

Margaret Jenkins 

The degree to which mobility scooter operators embrace the legal concept that they must act as if they are pedestrians, can be carried to extremes, as road rules expert John Weinert discovered recently.
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He told a Meet and Mingle group at U3A (University of the Third Age) in Benalla last week, that while traversing a roundabout in his car, he almost collided head on with a person in a mobility scooter, coming at him from the opposite direction. “I couldn’t see the front of the scooter he was so close to me”.

The explanation from the scooter operator was that as a pedestrian on a road, you must travel facing oncoming traffic and that was the way he believed he should negotiate a roundabout.

Mr Weinert, communications officer for RoadSafe North East based in Yarrawonga, was making one of his first presentations on driving safely since Covid constrained such talks two years ago.

He said the only approach scooter operators should take at roundabouts was to avoid them entirely.

He also said the biggest single thing drivers could do to increase their safety was to always drive with headlights on low beam. “That will greatly increase your visibility to other drivers, as will avoiding driving silver, green and black cars,” he said. “Those colours just blend into the bitumen and are very difficult to see”.

Buy the heaviest car you can handle, because if you are in a small car and collide with say a Land Cruiser, you and your car will come off second best.

If you have a chronic medical condition or disability that is not on your licence and you crash, your insurer will very likely deny liability. “The police or VicRoads don’t care but your insurer will,” he said.

Mr Weinert said the most dangerous manoeuvre of all, was doing a right hand turn, because there could be traffic going in four different directions.

He said it was best to turn right, when traffic was quieter and where there were right hand turn signal arrows, or at least traffic lights. “In a perfect world we would only do left hand turns but it could take us a long time to go anywhere,” he said.

He also spent time on other legalities of using a roundabout, to explain the law that says, those already on a roundabout have right of way. “But don’t carry that to extremes,” Mr Weinert said. “If a vehicle is on the far side of the roundabout, you will not clash with it if you enter the roundabout, when the vehicle is some distance from you”.

​Where merging lanes are encountered, Mr Weinert made the point that a vehicle entering a main road from a merging lane on the left, must give way to vehicles on the main road.

“If they go out of their way, they are doing you a courtesy to let you in easily, so give the other driver a waved acknowledgement,” he said.
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David Palmer