Melanie Suitor has been awarded the Senator Alex Gallacher Road Safety Award in recognition of the initiatives she has launched in our community to save lives.
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Melanie has been Parkes, Forbes and Lachlan Shire Council's Road Safety Officer for the past 22 years and was described as a very worthy recipient of the "Alex Award" created in honour of the late Senator.
"Melanie is committed to not only protecting her communities of Parkes, Forbes and Lachlan Shires, but through her work with the Australasian College of Road Safety's Local Government Network, which she leads, Mel is committed to getting every Australian home safe!" Safer Australian Roads and Highways (SARAH) President Peter Frazer OAM said.
"I feel incredibly humbled," Melanie said in response.
"I just turn up every day and do my job because I love it and I find it very rewarding. I just want to do the best job I can.
"The work we're doing is just so important on the ground at our local level and dealing with our community."
Melanie joined Parkes Shire Council in 2002 as the Roads and Safety Officer and quickly progressed to the Road Safety and Injury Prevention Officer. She paid tribute to the mentors who have taught her along the way.
"Over the years Mel has became one of the state's longest serving people in this role," Mayor Neil Westcott said in acknowledging the honour at council's January meeting.
"Mel has worked on many projects and award-winning programs have eventuated in this time."
Melanie has been one of the driving forces behind initiatives including, 'Hey kids protect your lids', Free Cuppa for a Driver, free car restraint checks, mock crash and the load restraint project.
The Mock Crash project started in 2008, showing year 10 students gaining their learner drivers license what can and does happen too often on local roads.
"Over the 10 years the program has been running we have seen 26 per cent reduction in crashes involving young drivers on our roads," Melanie said.
It's among more than 100 community road safety education programs she has run.
"That's the bit I love, getting out and talking to people," Melanie said.
The Load Restraint Project followed an increase in local restraint breeches recognised by local police and three serious incidents.
"We were very fortunate to get funding through the federal government heavy vehicle safety initiative to roll out this load restraint project," Melanie said.
"We developed some really high quality grass roots collateral that we took out to the community, how to videos, fact sheets, we went to farming villages and talked to over 100 farmers about load restraint and we gave out load restraint guides."
Melanie has recognised major problems facing our road safety in the region being seatbelts, phone usage, drink driving and speeding.
"Other things we do annually for our heavy vehicles are our heavy vehicle breakfast forum, we also do a pre-harvest field day and some satellite events where we go out to the villages and talk to those farmers about what the rules and regulations are moving their agricultural equipment on the road, cause we want them all to have a safe harvest," Melanie said.
"In being a road safety leader Mel, you have directly helped members of your local communities to get home safe, Every Single Day!" SARAH group said.
