THE stretch of Western Highway from the ring road to Melton has been named as one of Victoria's deadliest.
An assessment of more than 1725km of the state's highways also placed two sections of Princes Highway approaching Sale and Traralgon among the top three riskiest for motorists, the Herald Sun reports.
While they make up just 3 per cent of the state's network, the roads accounted for 9 per cent of road deaths.
The research was carried out under the Australian Road Assessment Program.
Conducted every five years, it analyses traffic, death and serious injury statistics to map the nation's riskiest roads.
The report How Safe Are Our Roads (rating Australia's National Network for Risk) dissected 20,000km of highway across the country.
The eight highways analysed in Victoria accounted for 127 deaths between 2005 and 2009 - more than 11 per cent of all road fatalities nationwide contained in the study.
While the highways studied represent 3 per cent of the total road network, they carry 15 per cent of the nation's traffic.
The study is a combined effort between peak road user bodies, including the RACV.
The report identified other roads in urgent need of improvement due to a high "collective risk" score based on crashes per kilometre.
RACV spokesman Brian Negus urged the federal and state governments to spend more money to reduce the risks.
He said 1400 people were killed and 32,500 injured every year on the nation's roads.
"Every day, four people die and 90 are seriously injured at a daily cost of $74 million to our communities," he said.
Relatively cheap measures, such as wire rope barriers to help prevent crashes into trees and sealing road shoulders, would go a long way to help cut the number of accidents.
"Most crashes occur when ordinary people make human mistakes," Mr Negus said.
"Safe roads minimise the chances of these crashes happening and . . . minimise the severity of the crash."
Read more at the Herald Sun.
