General News
20 October, 2025
Bleak safety rating for Stawell district roads
AUSTRALIA’s national road transport agency has painted a bleak picture of the condition of major arterial roads in Western Victoria, including many in the Stawell region. Austroads, the association of Australasian road transport and traffic agencies, has released safety star ratings for major arterial roads in a landmark step towards making our roads safer.
The new National AusRAP Dashboard gives a clear, interactive view of road safety to prioritise life‑saving upgrades.
These star ratings are part of the Australian Road Assessment Program (AusRAP), a nationally coordinated effort to identify which roads pose the highest risks of death and serious injury, and where road upgrades will have the greatest life-saving impact.
In Stawell and district, many of our major roads received a poor rating.
The major arterial, the Western Highway, carries approximately 11.3 million vehicles a year received a three star rating through Stawell and Great Western townships, but other sections through rural areas rated just two stars.
The Grampians Road between Stawell and Halls Gap which carries 1.9 million vehicles a year rated between 1.7 and 1.9 stars.
It was a similar case for the Donald Stawell Road with a rating of between 1.7 and 1.9 stars, although there was a small section around Callawadda that received a 2.6 star rating and Marnoo township which received 4 stars.
Pomonal-Stawell Road received 1.4 stars, although there is a section approaching the Western Highway that received 2 stars.
The Navarre Road received mixed ratings with some parts of the road scoring just 1.7 stars while better sections were rated at 2.5 stars.
“We know not all roads are equal when it comes to risk,” said Geoff Allan, Austroads Chief Executive.
“That’s why the focus of AusRAP is on the country’s most travelled roads – the highways and major arterial routes where millions of Australians drive every day, and where fatal and serious injury crashes are most likely to occur.”
“By publishing star ratings and crash history data on a single, national dashboard, we’re giving governments and the community a clear line of sight to where upgrades will have the greatest impact,” said Mr Allan.
Australia has a vast road network, and while many regional and local roads also need safety improvements, this phase of AusRAP is intentionally focused on the busiest corridors – where the risk is highest because of the sheer volume of traffic and higher travelling speeds.
This targeted approach, used together with or alongside other tools, assists governments to prioritise investments where they will save the most lives, the soonest.
“Road safety star ratings are a robust and trusted tool for communicating road safety information to the public, and Austroads is proud to coordinate and publish our members’ results. Importantly, these results provide a snapshot in time of the safety of our roads – and there is still much work to be done to reach our goal of having 80% of all travel occur on roads rated 3 stars or better by 2030,” added Mr Allan.
AusRAP star ratings assess how safe a road is, from 1-star (least safe) to 5-star (most safe).
There are no roads in the Stawell Region to achieve a 4 star or 5 star status.
Read More: Stawell