• I wonder if there was any way this was preventable, or just an extremely unlucky situation?

    Luck favours the prepared.

    Yes - it was unlucky, but it was also preventable… for starters, it seems pretty silly to have an outdoor beer garden adjacent to a roundabout where five streets all meet and two of them have cars travelling directly towards the beer garden (and two of the other five are close enough to the same direction that, if they lost control, they could also hit the beer garden).

    It’s easy to see that risk in hindsight, but it’s also possible to foresee it, if you do a proper risk assessment, and put mitigations in place (bollards, for example).

    • I’m kind of wondering if the beer garden had any permits.

      Vicroads is one of the biggest objector to planning permits in this state. One example is Moon Dog World Footscray, which wasn’t allowed to start building their brewery until measures to address the risk of a crash into the beer garden were addressed.