'Stressful and traumatic': the ongoing impacts from road trauma

Now Dawn Houghton wants her experience of the ongoing impact of road trauma to be the call for all drivers to think about others before taking risks on the roads.

Ms Houghton, now 74, had been travelling from her home to a doctor's appointment in 2017 when she arrived at a roundabout.

"I had given way to a car on my right before looking left. I saw a white car a long way away in the distance," she said.

Believing it was all clear, she entered the roundabout and almost immediately felt a "bang". Ms Houghton's car had been hit from behind, causing it to spin into the centre of the roundabout.

"I don't know what stopped me from rolling but it was really lucky I didn't roll," Ms Houghton recalled.

As smoke issued from her car and she stepped out of it, witnesses rushed to help her.

Ms Houghton alleges the other driver fled the scene and later faced police.

"I was hurt and in pain down my entire right side. I was having lots of trouble breathing and my knee had hit the dashboard and was injured."

While in hindsight she acknowledges that she should have agreed to be transported in an ambulance, Ms Houghton said she was anxious and preoccupied with trying to call a tow truck and working out how she would get back to her home in Dereel, in southern Victoria.

She remembers spending about an hour on the side of the road, "a long way from home".

She described the incident as extremely "stressful and traumatic" but she was most grateful for the help of a woman who remained by her side the entire time and called her husband to pick her up and take her to the doctor.

Ms Houghton's car was a write-off and needed to be towed from the scene.