Collision course

Editorial: Martin Kay

Photography: Jesse Wray-McCann, Shane Bell

It has been a tragic start to 2019 on Victoria’s roads. The numbers tell the story of lives lost and families broken.

At the conclusion of Victoria Police's Queen's Birthday long weekend road policing operation, 147 people had died on the state's roads, a shocking 55 more than the same time last year.

It’s a rate that puts Victoria on track to record the highest number of annual road deaths for more than a decade.

The increase comes despite the huge effort by Victoria Police and its road safety partners to prevent death and serious injury on the roads.

Measures include 50,000 more roadside drug tests, operations cracking down on dangerous behaviours such as speed, impairment and distraction and initiatives aimed at groups overrepresented in the fatality statistics.

This prevention and deterrence work is the public face of road policing in Victoria. But when tragedy does occur, it falls to a highlyspecialised team to find out what has gone wrong and bring to justice those who have taken lives through criminal acts.

Every time there is a fatal or life-threatening crash on Victoria’s roads, the phone rings at the Major Collision Investigation Unit’s (MCIU) base in Melbourne’s Notting Hill.

The MCIU is charged with determining whether these collisions warrant further investigation, though there are several categories they must attend.

These include collisions in which three or more people have died, hit-and-runs and cases where there is evidence that a surviving driver has committed an offence, such as drink or drug driving, excessive speed or distraction.

Head of road policing operations and investigations Superintendent John Fitzpatrick says the MCIU is an important cog in Victoria’s road policing machinery.

“Our operational focus is very much on preventing death and injury on the roads, but despite these efforts, there are road users who engage in dangerous behaviour, such as driving after drinking or using drugs or speeding,” Supt Fitzpatrick said.

“When that results in lives being lost, it’s important that we hold those responsible to account and get justice for the victims and their loved ones.”

With a total of four years in the MCIU, Detective Sergeant Chris Hayes has seen more than enough senseless loss of life on the roads.

He was working as a detective investigating organised crime when a colleague who had previously been in the MCIU told him about the “thorough and complex investigations” conducted by the unit.

Det Sgt Chris Hayes hopes to see the road toll reduced.

“It sparked an interest in me and by coincidence, one of the few MCIU positions was advertised the very next week. I took it as a sign and applied,” Det Sgt Hayes said.

Completing the Advanced Diploma of Police Investigation is a requirement for joining the unit, but Det Sgt Hayes said most of the specialised skills are learnt on the job and take time to acquire.

“The first collision you attend just looks like a mess of twisted metal, fluids, scrapes and skid marks, but after a while you can pick out the important clues used to reconstruct the collision,” he said.

The team uses an array of specialist equipment to map out crime scenes, including a 3D scanner that records millions of positions in the space of a few minutes, but there is also plenty of “good old fashioned detective work”.

“A lot of people see us at collisions taking measurements, photographs and samples and assume our role is purely forensic,” Det Sgt Hayes said.

“What doesn’t get seen is the detective work on the back end.

“Our initial scene examination is definitely weighted towards collecting and documenting the physical evidence, but some of our more complex investigations, especially hit-and-run collisions, use traditional detective work and covert methods to identify the suspect and track them down.”

He said there had been a notable increase in callouts this year, many of them to country areas and collisions involving motorcyclists.

“I’d say our workload is about 50 days ahead of where we were last year," Det Sgt Hayes said.

“To put that into context, it’s late-May now and last year it was well into July before we had the number of cases we’ve got now.”

Like many things in policing, investigating a fatal collision is a team effort, with the first responders playing an important role in preserving evidence and protecting potential crime scenes.

Sen Const Kelly Carvill sets up a 3D scanner used by the MCIU at crash scenes. The images created by the 3D scanner can be zoomed, rotated and measured.

Once they are on the scene, MCIU detectives will form an initial working theory of what has happened, which guides future investigations.

Det Sgt Hayes said investigating road trauma could take its toll, and it was always difficult seeing young lives cut short.

But it is important for Victoria Police to piece together what had happened and give closure to the loved ones left behind.

“When you’re there at the scene, it’s all ugly and a mess, but when you’re able to come to the family of the victims later and tell them exactly what’s happened and answer all their questions, that’s what makes it all worthwhile," Det Sgt Hayes said.