The friends, all from the south-western district were returning home from a day of dancing at St Arnaud when their car was hit by another at the corner of Bains Road and the Ararat-St Arnaud Road at 6pm on Saturday. 

Dianne Barr, from Heywood, Tess Ely and Elaine Middleton both from Hamilton and Claudia Jackson of Portland have been named as the victims.

Residents Michael and Debborah Standfield were among the first at the scene.

Mr Standfield said in the few seconds it took him to get to the scene, three were dead, while a fourth was near death.

“They were gone. Just like that. There was nothing you could do,” he said.

Mrs Standfield said she could see the accident occurring, even before it happened.

“I’d just opened a bottle of wine with a friend and I could just see that neither were going to stop, they were going too fast” she said.

“I stood up and low-and-behold the car coming towards us just crashed into the other one.”

Helen Bibby’s husband Rupert and daughter Leonie both heard the accident and tried to help the victims, but it was too late.

“We had two elderely people killed on this corner many years ago,” she said.

“We have seen a lot of people shoot straight across here and then realise they’ve gone too far and turn around again.

“The signage is there, but nothing has changed at the intersection in the last 15-20 years. 

“People do come down and shoot across. Whether it’s a place for a roundabout or something, I don’t know.

“My husband was very shaken up when he got home last night.”

Mr Standfield, a former policeman, said he and his wife had seen many cars fail to stop at the stop signs.

“You can just tell, a lot run straight through the intersection,” he said.

“For some reason, they miss it, there must be something wrong with the road.

“I see semi’s go through there, For some reason, that one is the problem. It needs ripple strips at least to slow people down.”

Mrs Standfield said just two days ago a truck was involved in a near miss.

“I heard the screeching brakes and I looked out and he’d nearly cleaned up someone,” she said.

“You see the cars go down Bains Road, they just fly down there. A lot go through and stop because they don’t know where they are.”

Assistant Commissioner Doug Fryer, who flew to the crash scene on Saturday, described it as surreal and said it would haunt him for some time.

"Whilst horrific, it was surreal, to have four women who looked like they were just asleep, they died from internal injuries," he said.

"The image I won't forget was the driver was holding the hand of her front seat passenger as she passed, and it's that sort of image that my members, community members, the people who went to help, none of them will forget those sorts of images."

Cynthia Rennolds, who runs the line-dancing event the women had attended at St Arnaud town hall, described them as "fun loving".

She said she had fielded messages from all over Australia.

"We’re just a big family, even though these people don’t know them, they’re all feeling our pain. We just can’t believe it," Ms Rennolds said.

"They were part of our little family. They were happy when they left, probably sitting in the car discussing how much fun they had during the day.

"It’s senseless, I just can’t believe that four of them, we lost four of them in one fell swoop.”

The driver of the other car, who is from Stawell, was taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. She is yet to be interviewed by police.

Eight people lost their lives in Victoria at the weekend in a tragic end to National Road Safety Week.

The other fatalities occurred at Dixons Creek in the north-east of the state, Heatcote Junction, Bright and in Preston. Victoria’s road toll is at 78, 11 fewer than the same time last year.