REGIONAL DRIVER SAFETY: A matter of time

PARTNER CONTENT

Troy Mathews was just 41 years old when he became the 46th person to die on South Australian roads in 2022.

He was alone; a single vehicle crash into a tree on the backroads of Padthaway in the state’s south east.

Troy knew the roads well – he lived just a kilometre away.

He’d also been drink driving, like he’d done so many times before.

His daughter Lily, who was aged just 15 at the time, doesn’t mince her words when she speaks about her father’s death.

She was still awake the night the police and a CFS volunteer (a family friend – because that’s how it is in country towns) knocked at her family’s door to deliver the terrible news.

It was a Sunday, and Troy, a builder, had been at a work party, celebrating the recent completion of a house.

“Stupidly, he had one too many beers to drink and decided to get in the car and drive home,” Lily said, recalling the night her family’s life was changed forever.

“I tried contacting him many times, asking him when he was going to get home, and he was like, ‘oh soon, soon, soon’. He never did.”

According to Lily, it was a tragic outcome which she and her family had long since felt was, “only a matter of time”.

“Unfortunately, he had done it many times before... thinking he was invincible, until he wasn’t,” she said.

Lily’s frustration at her father’s choices that night are evident, but as well as that, it’s the normalisation of drink driving, particularly in regional areas, that fuels her fury.

“A lot of kids I know, their parents always drive home drunk, or after they’ve had a couple of beers, so they think that it is acceptable, ‘because Dad does it’... The culture just needs to change, especially in country towns, because we’ve had too many people die from it,” she said.

Now a young advocate for road safety education, Lily is determined to use her story to lay bare the very real and lifelong consequences of drink driving.

While she had a good relationship with her dad, it was a conversation that was never had – what life would look like for her and her younger sister if Troy was to die behind the wheel.

“I don’t think that the parents actually think about it, to be honest,” Lily said.

The reality of it has been traumatic and destabilising, with the family eventually relocating to Robe to escape the stigma of Troy’s death.

There’s other consequences too, even for Lily, who describes herself as being quite stoic in her grief.

“I don’t think it really hit me until I hit Year 12, and then I saw all my friends’ dads coming to graduation and celebrating with them,” she said.

“It doesn’t really hit you until you see those bigger milestones that you know that he won’t ever be there for.”

It is Lily’s hope that her story can be the wake-up call that others may not even realise they need.

“You’re lucky until you’re not. Don’t think you’re invincible just because you’ve gotten away with it one time. All it takes is a split second and then you can be gone,” she said.

And, “Just don’t be a bystander. If you know that someone’s going to (drink drive), take their keys, be the bad person, because you can save not only their life, but everyone else’s life at the same time.”