Welcome to the town of SpeedKills
The tiny Victorian town of Speed is being renamed SpeedKills today as part of a unique road safety campaign.
The blink-and-you'll-miss-it town in the Mallee in Victoria's north-west has a population of just 45.
Locals were enthusiastic when the temporary name change was suggested to them, but it was the help of more than 30,000 Facebook users that made the name-change possible.
Phil Down, a local wheat and sheep farmer, says the aim of the name change is to encourage people to slow down on country roads.
"We've got a fuel and machinery dealer and then we've got a general store, post office and other than that, we've just got a few houses and that's it," he said.
"It's virtually on the road to somewhere else, so we've taken our quirky name and run with it to bring the attention to the campaign of trying to get people to slow down on country roads and especially through small towns."
Victoria's Transport Accident Commission (TAC), which promotes road safety, approached Speed residents with the idea.
It suggested that if 10,000 Facebook users supported renaming Speed to SpeedKills, the change would go ahead and the TAC would donate $10,000 to the local Lions Club.
Videos were then posted on the social networking site.
"Speeding through Speed is probably something that some people think is a great idea but we don't think so. People are a bit tired and think, well, nobody lives here, it is just a small town, but we live here," a local in the video said.
More than 30,000 Facebook users have now given the campaign the thumbs up and the TAC is doubling its donation.
Mr Down says Speed's residents are right behind the re-naming.
"Yeah well, Speed has got a fairly elderly population so it is fair to say a lot of them aren't on Facebook but that were really quite open to the proposal," he said.
"I personally thought there might have been a few negative but I didn't hear one of them so everyone was happy to go with it and use our name as a method of getting the message out there and to have the name nationally and gone internationally is quite phenomenal.
"It certainly shows what the new social networking is capable of."
And it is not just the town that is changing its name today.
"My name is Phillip Down and the radio interviewers thought what a great idea if they could ask to go further with the campaign as well as SpeedKills, what about Phillip Down to Phillip Slowdown," Mr Down said.
"So I agreed to it and for another 10,000 likes on Facebook I've agreed to do that and we achieved that within five days so from today I will be known as Phillip Slowdown."
Speed was originally named after a Victorian railway commissioner.
Both the town and Phil Down will revert to their original names in a month.
