Reducing Victoria's road toll won't be easy but police and the government are confident $340 million worth of upgrades to some of the state's accident hot spots will help save lives.
Flexible roadside and centre-line barriers, rumble strips, and reflective guide posts will be installed on more than 2500km of rural roads across Ballarat and western Victoria.
Wider centre lines will also be installed on some rural roads to better separate oncoming traffic as part of the state government's plan to reduce the road toll by 2020.
"All of this is about saving lives. We want that road toll to be under 200 by 2020," Premier Daniel Andrews told reporters on Sunday.
"It won't be easy to get there, but we are determined - in partnership with Victoria Police and our agencies and the driving public - to save those lives and spare so many families from the pain and suffering that is synonymous with road trauma."
The 20 high-risk roads that will be upgraded include the Hume Freeway/Highway between Thomastown and Wodonga, the Calder Freeway between Bendigo and Keilor Park, and the Geelong-Bacchus Marsh Road.
In the past five years, 42 people have died on these three roads alone, while another 358 have been seriously injured, the government says.
It's predicted the installation of flexible barriers along 330km of high-risk, high-volume roads with speed limits of 100km/h will reduce head-on and off-road crashes by up to 85 per cent.
Roads Minister Luke Donnellan says the upgrades, which are part of the government's Towards Zero action plan, are driven by statistics which show where fatal accidents are taking place.
"We're putting the money where it is actually required," he said.
Additional protection will also be installed on popular motorcycle routes to make them safer for riders.
Victoria has had its worst start to the year on the roads with 77 dead before the end of March - 24 of them motorcyclists.
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