The tampering with a Princes Hwy road sign this week has the NSW Minister for Regional Transport and Roads seeing red.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
After the Bega District News flagged a sign just south of Narooma clearly upside-down and a potential risk to motorists' lives, Jenny Aitchison MP called to express her deep concern and to urge all travellers to report incidents like this as soon as they see them.
She said it was particularly galling given this was National Road Safety Week, May 5-12.
"I get a text nearly every day of the year about a fatality on a road," Ms Aitchison said.
"We've all got a shared collective responsibility for road safety.
"While this might be a joke to someone, this could've resulted in a death and could've been someone in our community who died because of a sign.
"That is just the most frustrating thing, when you think someone has vandalised the sign and hasn't considered that if someone was to follow the sign and not the line marking - that's a death right there."
Ms Aitchison said preventable road deaths "happen all too often".
"Think of the driving forces of trauma and death on our roads, which are speeding, drink and drug driving, mobile phone use, fatigue and not wearing seatbelts - they are all about people's behaviours," she said.
"If we have people thinking it's okay to have a joke about road safety by changing a sign, that's the culture we have to change right now."
While the Princes Hwy was a state road managed by Transport for NSW, Ms Aitchison said the most important step for people to take was to act quickly in reporting incidents like this, whether that was to the state body or local council.
She said Transport had close connections with councils so the message would get to where it was needed regardless.
Vandalism or signage issues like this should be reported as soon as possible by calling the Service NSW Incident Reporting Line on 131 700.
That number can also be used to report road hazards such as vehicle breakdowns, crashes and anything affecting the flow of traffic.