A person is killed or hospitalised once every two hours on average from a crash on Victoria's roads. Last year 249 died and more than 5000 were hospitalised.

But a drop in road fatalities will only be achieved if Victorian motorists are prepared to make "difficult decisions" about how they drive and what speeds are appropriate, Roads Minister Luke Donnellan warns.

Efforts to reduce the number of deaths on Victoria's roads have stalled. The state's road toll increased last year from 243 to 249 and it is three deaths higher now at 112 than it was this time last year.

Other countries have overtaken Victoria in their steps to reduce the toll and the state must consider adopting the same strategies if we truly want to eradicate road deaths, Mr Donnellan said.

"If we're not aiming towards zero what are we aiming for, an acceptable level of death?" he said.

Countries including Sweden and Britain, where road deaths per head of population are lower than here, had prioritised safety above all other considerations, including travel times, Mr Donnellan said.

"We've got about four deaths per 100,000, they're at 2.7. They don't tend to accept there should be arguments in terms of getting people faster to work and so forth, that becomes irrelevant," he said.

"The argument is, how do I get this person safely to work?"

Mr Donnellan recently reversed a VicRoads plan to reduce speed limits  from 70 km/h to 60 km/h on scores of main roads in Victoria,.

He said speed limits should not be cut across the board, only be cut if there was data confirming safety would be improved.

What are the odds of death on the road? 

Statistically, a pedestrian has a 100 per cent chance of being killed if hit at 60 km/h or more; a driver or passenger hit side-on has a 100 per cent chance of dying at collision speeds of 80 km/h and above and at 100 km/h in a head-on crash, death is certain.

How to bring down the road toll?

A state-wide series of community sessions about road safety kicked off in Melbourne on Tuesday night, following the release on the same day of a discussion paper on the government's next road safety strategy and action plan, to be published later this year.

The paper reveals country roads with speed limits of 110 km/h to 110 km/h are the scene of nearly half of all road fatalities in Victoria.

Intersections in 60/70 km/h zones and local streets with speed limits of 40/50 km/h are also problems that must be improved.

The discussion paper posits "a future where nobody dies on the road".

"In the coming decades, new technologies that prevent vehicles from crashing into objects in front of them, that warn drivers of speed limits and can steer cars to safety if they are running off the road, have enormous potential to save lives and prevent injuries," it states.

Is the future driverless?

One expert who believes technological advances will do far more to reduce the road toll than any other factor is Gavin Smith, president of Bosch Australia.

"More than 90 per cent of all traffic accidents are caused by human error, so if you can reduce the level of human error then you immediately get a disproportionate impact on the road toll," Mr Smith said.

A road toll target of zero could therefore only be achieved in a future where vehicles are fully automated, or "driverless", he said.

In the meantime, the government should hasten the removal from the roads of older vehicles that do not have life-saving safety features, such as airbag and electronic stability control, Mr Smith said.

Driverless cars are about 10 years away from reality in Australia, he predicted.

In some countries, they are closer than that.