The cause is unknown at this stage, but it is the consequence that is the issue, irrespective.
Hardly a day goes past without some news story about a truck crash on a Sydney road and this is compounded across Australia.
Yet in transport policy unison, governments across Australia at state and federal levels have abandoned rail freight and instead are headlong encouraging more and bigger trucks on our roads. They are encouraging larger and long trucks and spending billions to accommodate them. Road making has become governments’ panacea for solving linehaul freight challenges. The numbers of trucks on local, suburban and regional roads across Australia must have doubled in the past decade or so.
At the same time, both levels of government have been lax for decades to ensure high standards of heavy vehicles and the professional competency of truck drivers. Australian trucking has become a cowboy game plagued by industry cost cutting and unreasonable delivery expectations. The industry’s problems compound down to the truckie.
Truck drivers across Australia are no longer paid a fair hourly rate for their work, but have been reduced to being paid by a minimalist ‘trip rate’. So the more trips they do, the more they get paid. Overnight linehaul trucking is a ticking time bomb.
Truck drivers across Australia more often than not are no longer paid employees who are professionally trained by their employers. They are typically owner driver sub contractors with a massive bank mortgage tied to the truck or prime mover they own. They only get paid by the runs they do and have all the burden of maintenance, repairs, insurance and loan repayments. That is before paying themselves a wage. Forget leave and superannuation.
Trucking industry professionalism is out the door. Anyone can get a truck licence. The concept of trucking being a profession in Australia in the days of TNT and Mayne Nickless has long become a distant memory. It is a mugs game now.
Truck drivers, motorists and roadside communities are the victims of dumbed down bad government transport policy. The only ones who are benefiting from cheap dumbed down trucking are the trucking magnates and their corporate retail clients. The politicians save money building trucking roads instead of big picture rail and integrated multimodal logistics. But roads for trucks is short term thinking. It is a policy that has ignored road users’ rights to expect the highest standards of road safety.
Australia’s trucking regime is sapping billions for faster and wider roads instead of long term investment in freight rail,just like their doing to the Great Western Highway to freight produce and goods across the continent. It’s to hell with the local communities they rip up along the way. It’s to hell with the native habitat they rip up to build wider and new trucking expressways. When fuel and toxic chemicals spill from overturned trucks, it’s to hell with the downstream environment.
More roadside communities are increasing exposed to the risk of deadly speeding trucks, and people are dying as a result.
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Safety First Residents of the roadside community of Woodford in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney protest over losing their pedestrian crossing so that trucks can cruise nudging 90kph through their village. [Photo by Jodi McConaghy, 20130608]
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The NSW Government’s RTA-come-RMS (roads authority) has “ripped the heart” out of Woodford.
Woodford Progress Association spokesman Ian Robinson told 100 residents in a protest rally last June that Woodford was “once known as the heart of the Mountains but the RMS has ripped the heart right out of our town”. Mr Robinson says the current plans leaves the elderly stranded, splits the town in two and forces school children to make a large detour to get to their bus stop, he said.
“Without lights across the highway within the vicinity of the Woodford Academy, not only children, but also residents and fire brigade volunteers on the north side are cut off from south side neighbours [and] the elderly … are stranded in their own village,” he said.
The truck-centric civil engineers with the RTA-come-RMS expect local residents to take a two kilometre detour to use the pedestrian bridge at Woodford railway station.
Mr Robinson said:
“They also now tell us that they do not regard Woodford as a ‘town’ and that they want to run four lanes of traffic at 80 km/hr right through the heart of Woodford.”
Cheap but dangerous seagull intersections are to be built in the centre of the new wider trucking expressway between massive trucks doing 90kph down the hill through Woodford.
A third resident petition to the NSW Roads Minister has again been ignored. It’s all about trucks with the politicians.
(Former) councillor Geordie Williamson, a Woodford resident, says the plan also threatens the lives of the 2500 Woodford residents.
“The very least RMS can do is grant residents a safe means of crossing the newly-widened highway. Failing to do so will virtually guarantee injury or loss of life in the years to come,” Clr Williamson said. “The highway should not only be designed to massage the bottom line of freight haulage companies.”
The Mona Vale Road trucking experienceComing to a roadside community near you.
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Footnote
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Government belatedly issues Cootes Transport with 126 Defect Notices
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<< Police believe mechanical problems are the most likely cause of the fatal crash involving the Cootes Transport petrol tanker since the out-of-control fuel tanker ploughed into a power pole and four cars before erupting in a fireball on Mona Vale Road.
A Mr Shane Day has been identified as the driver of the petrol tanker, who works for Cootes Transport. It is not clear if he is an employee or a contractor, but industry probability would like be the latter and not paid by Cootes by the hour.
So two men were burnt alive when this Cootes petrol tanker lost control on Mona Vale Road at Mona Vale about 3:40pm (AEST) yesterday. Police say the dead men are a 71-year-old local and a man in his 60s from interstate. Both men were travelling in the same car, when this trucking wall of death bore down upon them.
Assistant Police Commissioner John Hartley:
“It certainly looks like they were killed at the scene by the fire rather than the crash itself.”
They were burnt alive.
Twelve trucks operated by Cootes Transport have been taken off the road. Inspectors from the New South Wales Government’s Roads and Maritime Services have subsequently inspected more than 80 Cootes Transport trucks at checking stations in Sydney and Newcastle late this afternoon. The company has been issued with 26 defect notices and 12 trucks have been taken off the road.
[Ed: A belated slap on the wrist for purported negligence causing two men to burn to death, just to pacify the media and political fallout. Government reactive and random monitoring of safety is negligent cost cutting and so life costing. At no time should unroadworthy trucks be in service. At no time should unprofessional heavy vehicle drivers be behind the wheel. It must cost more, and so be it. Next week as the media interest fades, it’ll be government trucking as usual and billion dollar truck magnate profit as usual].
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Mr Hartley:
“We’re investigating a number of factors that may have contributed to the crash but at this stage we’re looking at the possibility of mechanical failure on the truck itself. That’s probably the most important lead we have at this stage. The vehicle needs to be fully examined properly. At the end of the day we’ll find that something quite simple such as mechanical failure or a mistake by the driver has caused these fatal consequences.”
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Meanwhile, the toxic spill caused by a fuel tanker’s 18,000 litres of petrol from the exploded tanker has flooded and contaminated surrounding waterways and bushland.
A mix of fuel and fire retardant has leaked into the surrounding waterways for at least a 1.5 kilometre radius.
A toxic mix of 18,000 litres of petrol and fire retardant polluting surrounding waterways.Without trucks Australia may stop, but with the current trucking mentality people are dying, like the two men burnt to death in the above car.
(Source: ABC News)
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NSW Fire Brigade Superintendent Ian Krimmer:
“It is a big operation to clean up the leaking fuel which has seeped into drains and waterways at Mona Vale. We’re placing sand in a number of those drains to contain the fuel spillage,” he said. It’s still unknown how much fuel has leaked into those drains. It could take several days to mop up and clean up that particular situation.”
Riverside Refridgerated Transport semi-trailer loses control at speed at night in the wet on the Great Western Highway in an 80kph zoneThen crashes into a Springwood home narrowly missing the occupants. Last Monday 20130916 near midnight
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This loaded semi-trailer was being driven by 43 year old truck driver from Cowra, where Riverside Refridgerated Transport is based. It was near midnight and he was likely delivering refridgerated farm produce to Sydney markets.
Problem is that it was wet and along that section of the Great Western Highway through Springwood the speed limit is 80kph. So the truck driver must have been either speeding or fell asleep at the wheel, or both. The semi careered off the highway on the right bend and ploughed into a telegraph pole, cutting it in half under the force, then crashed into the side yard of 2 Boland Avenue, just metres from the house and its innocent occupants.
So much for carting Cowra’s best produce to marketPay peanuts, cut corners…
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The crash also ruptured a gas main, which caused a significant leak, causing all west bound lanes of the highway to be closed for one and a half hours. Police also had to evacuate residents from another two nearby homes.
What caused the crash? The media is quick to report the crash as a newsworthy story, but rarely investigates the cause nor takes much interest in the repeated recurrence on our highways.
The government authority responsible for trucking operations and for road design and safety across New South Wales is the Roads and Maritime Services (the old RTA-com-RMS, just rebranded). There is no crash barrier on this right bend of the Great Western Highway, yet this particular road section allows for all vehicles to travel at 80 kph. It is just past a down hill run, so how many vehicles travelling east typically nudge 90 kph, including trucks?
The RTA-come-RMS doesn’t care. Has it ever had speed monitoring at this location? Road policy at the RTA-come-RMS is that crash barriers and upgrades to highway safety are not implemented unless there is a history of “crash data”. Someone has to die before the RTA-come-RMS does anything.
Consider the nearby George Street intersection with the Great Western Highway just a kilometre east. When the highway was widened gto four lanes and tranformed into a 80 kph trucking expressway, George Street access was without traffic lights. Entry into the highway was Russian Roulette. Around this four laned expressway section of the Great Western Highway between 2000 and 2010, as it travels through Springwood, some 137 crashes have been documented according to Blue Mountains Council records. [Source: ‘Springwood to Valley Heights Link Road -Traffic Modelling Report, 20120408, by GST Consultants p.5, – see report attached at end of this article].
Wider and faster is not safer! More faster bigger trucks are not safer!
Midnight trucking is inherently deadly because late and night and the early hours of the morning only defies the human biological clock when humans naturally need sleep. Graveyard shift work on the road through the night is killing truck drivers and fellow motorists sharing the highway. Midnight trucking is a ticking time bomb.
Fatigue Management is a farce …just don’t forget to spell towns properly in your log book.
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Yet governments across Australia including the New South Wales government are encouraging this unnatural practice, by accommodating the trucking industry with bigger roads and transforming regional highways like the Great Western Highway into national trucking expressways.
And as they build bigger roads for bigger trucks, they destroy the environment and roadside communities.
Australian governments at national and state levels are changing laws to allow for larger and longer trucks B-doubles and B-triples to do the overnight linehaul task best suited to trains.
B-triples (basically ‘road-trains’) have already been introduced on regional highways in South Australian, Queensland and Victoria
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Yet despite national legislation to try to address the systemic fatigue problem amongst linehaul truck drivers, goivernment agencies like the RTA-come-RMS provbide not fatigue managemnent infratructure along the entire length of the Great Western Higwhay between Penrith and Orange.
It’s a disgraceful “she’ll be right” mindset – just use the servos or park your rig on the highway shoulder outside local residents homes, like opposite the Caltex servo in Mount Victiria and leave your refrigerator compressor on all night.
Midnight Refridgeration…passing through a town near you
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Five days previously in Adelaide, on Wednesday 20130911, at about 1:00 am a B-Double left Glen Osmond Drive in the suburb of Frewville and collected a parked van, stobie pole, water hydrant and gas meter, before coming to a rest in the front of the Singapore House restaurant at 203 Glen Osmond Road.
Not the first time for midnight trucking on four laned sections of the Great Western Highway..and this is before you get to the deadly six-laned M4.
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Still, the NSW Government remains manifestly committed to its 20th Century trucking mindset, ignoring big picture freight rail. It has this week just announced it will spend $11.5 billion on a 33 km trucking motorway across Sydney. That is nearly a third of the annual Gross Domestic Product of New South Wales.
Just as the F3 was widened from two lanes each way, the existing M4 is to be widened to four lanes each way.
<<A fully-laden double fuel tanker overturned in a short, straight, three-laned section of the highway between Katoomba and Medlow Bath in the early hours of Sunday, May 12.
The giant rig owned by Orange-based Ron Finemores Transport was being driven west when it veered onto the road shoulder and overturned down an embankment, coming to rest with the twin tankers upside down.
An ambulance spokesman said the driver, a 34-year-old Millthorpe man, was able to free himself from his wrecked cabin and clambered back to the roadway where one of the first on the scene was an off-duty paramedic. He was taken to Katoomba Hospital and treated for minor facial injuries.
Driver Fatigue is suspected as a possible cause of the smash.>>
[Ed: So are Finemore’s drivers paid by the hour or by completed trip – where the more trips and the faster they hurtle along, the cheaper it is for the trucking corporation? Are there any unions left to represent truck drivers’ occupational health and safety on The Road as a Workplace?
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On The Road as a Workplace, the New South Wales Government provides no truck rest stop along the entire length of the Great Western Highway between Orange and Sydney (255 km) in either direction to properly cater for heavy vehicle driver fatigue.
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The token parking bay at Faulconbridge westbound through the Blue Mountains is a substandard joke, with the only facilities being two rubbish bins. The westbound shoulder at Mount Victoria opposite the Caltex Service Station for trucker cabin sleeping is a disgraceful defacto emergency stopover and only inflicts noise pollution to nearby locals 24/7.
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Overpaid NSW Transport urban bureaucrats Peter Duncan, Les Wielinga, Roads Minister Duncan Gay, and millionnaire magnate Ron Finemore need to do a few nights truck cabin kip there (this time of year) and then directly turn up for work the next day. At the same time, these same NSW Government urban bureaucrats justify billions to widen the highway to four lanes to facilitate more corporate truck freight – as if an urban fatigue free route.
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Ron Finemore Transport is one of the corporate trucking lobbyists pushing for more and bigger trucks along the Great Western Highway. In 2012 the company opened a new $9 million facility in Orange along the highway to house its 120 B-Double truck drivers and fleet of 50 B-Doubles.
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Selfish trucking magnates like Finemore divert New South Wales Government from investing in freight rail services and infrastructure. They perpetuate the dangerous B-Double Menace that is increasingly killing and maiming ordinary users of our regional highways and a deadly social problem avoided by governments around Australia.]
<<A woman has died after a crash between a truck and car today (Thursday) at Luddenham in Sydney’s west, police say. Police and other emergency services attended the collision on The Northern Road, near Littlefields Rd, about 10am. A brief will be prepared for the Coroner.
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Meanwhile, a 44-year-old man has been injured after a multiple-vehicle crash in Sydney’s west this morning. About 5:05am, two semi-trailers, A Toyota Hilux utility and a Ford sedan at the intersection of the Great Western Highway and Doonside Rd at Arndell Park. Emergency services personnel took about 30 minutes to remove the utility driver from the vehicle. He is being treated in Westmead Hospital for chest and arm injuries.>>
<<A B-Double truck travelling in lane three on the M4 Motorway near St Clair (Sydney’s west) has changed lanes and moved into the path of a utility this morning (Sunday).
The B-Double struck the car and the car then flipped over and ended on its roof, killing the car driver. The driver of the B-Double truck failed to stop and continued travelling west along the M4.
[Ed: … I own the road but I saw nuuthing!]
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<<Meanwhile, a 32-year-old male pedestrian has suffered a serious leg fracture when he was struck by a truck in another hit-and-run near Newcastle last night (Saturday).
Police say the man was walking north in the breakdown lane of the Pacific Highway at Tomago, where three lanes merge into two, when he was hit by a truck at a point past the northern end of Hexham Bridge about 6:45pm. The man was thrown on to the highway’s grass shoulder, while the truck did not stop!
The injured man managed to crawl back to the edge of the road and hail a passing motorist for help, police say. He was treated at the scene and taken to Newcastle’s John Hunter Hospital suffering a serious lower leg fracture. The Newcastle Crash Investigation Unit is looking into the crash and making attempts to track down the truck involved.>>
[Ed: … I own the road but I saw nuuthing!]
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May 2013: B-Double hangs off Melbourne’s Bolte Bridge
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B-Doubles Out of Control
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<<The driver plunged from the cabin of his vehicle after a road crash left the truck’s cabin dangling off Melbourne’s Bolte Bridge just after 6.30am today (17th May, 2013).
There is traffic chaos on a Melbourne freeway where a truck has crashed and been left dangling precariously over the side. The truck driver was taken to Royal Melbourne Hospital and is in a critical condition. The driver of the other car was also taken to hospital in an unknown condition.
The incident has caused chaos on the Tullamarine Freeway, which is now closed to inbound traffic at Flemington Road. City-bound traffic on the Tullamarine Freeway remains at a standstill.
The road will likely be closed until later today and transport authority VicRoads has advised motorists to avoid the heavily-congested area. Crews will work to remove the truck, which is hanging halfway over the bridge, and assess damage to the road before it is reopened to motorists.>>
<<A woman has died after a crash between a truck and car today (Thursday) at Luddenham in Sydney’s west, police say. Police and other emergency services attended the collision on The Northern Road, near Littlefields Rd, about 10am. A brief will be prepared for the Coroner.
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Meanwhile, a 44-year-old man has been injured after a multiple-vehicle crash in Sydney’s west this morning.
About 5:05am, two semi-trailers, A Toyota Hilux utility and a Ford sedan at the intersection of the Great Western Highway and Doonside Rd at Arndell Park.
Emergency services personnel took about 30 minutes to remove the utility driver from the vehicle. He is being treated in Westmead Hospital for chest and arm injuries. No one else was injured, police say.>>
<<A truck driver had a lucky escape after his semi-trailer caught fire in Victoria’s north. The truck carrying carpet was travelling on the Hume Highway near Wallan when the blaze began at 2pm. It is understood the driver fled the cabin of the truck as soon as he noticed the flames.
Up to 13 fire crews have been on scene battling the big blaze for hours. Police will investigate the cause of the fire as soon as it has been brought under control.
<<A driver escaped injury after a truck loaded with plastics exploded on a highway south-west of Sydney early this morning.
A truck loaded with wheelie bins has been engulfed in fire on a highway south-west of Sydney. The truck caught fire just (around midnight) today on the Hume Highway, south of Berrima.
A spokesperson for the NSW Rural Fire Service told ninemsn the trailer was filled with 800 domestic garbage bins. Molten plastic spread across the southbound lanes of the highway.
It took six fire trucks to extinguish the blaze which caused “extensive” damage to the trailer.>>
Apr 2013: Young man killed in horror head-on with B-Double
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Nothing Left
Pacific Highway near Ulmarra
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<<Police confirmed a man aged in his 20s died after the southbound Mazda 929 he was driving was involved in a head-on with a B-Double truck. The crash happened 3km north of the town about 3.15am.
Witnesses told police after the initial impact the truck swerved off the highway, rolled onto its side into a paddock and burst into flames. Firefighters who battled the blaze said the driver had a lucky escape. Fire crews said they were met by an inferno when they arrived on scene with flames rising as high as 10 to 20 metres above the wreckage.
The accident happened on a notorious Pacific Highway section…>>
Apr 2013: Speeding B-Double crashes and cattle killed, others shot
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B-Double Cattle Truck crash kills livestock, injured cattle are shot
Photo by Moree Champion
<<There was yet another truck roll on the Garah/Mungindi Road.
Dozens of cattle have been killed in a B-Double accident in north-west NSW. The truck rolled on a bend on the outskirts of Garah near Moree just after seven this morning.
Moree Plains Council ranger Jock Jones says locals are working together to save what cattle they can, and round up those that got away.
“We’ve used grinders to open the tray up. We’ve got a front end loader that’s pulling the truck apart,” he said. “It’s a hideous job now. Pulling them out is very sad. I’ve had to shoot a lot but we are saving a lot. “Most of them have got out and run off.”
There were about 60 cattle on board. It’s thought the cattle had come from Longreach in Queensland.
The 46-year-old driver of the truck was thrown clear on impact. He was treated by paramedics for facial injuries and cuts to his arms, back and legs. He was taken to Moree hospital in a stable condition.>>
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Ed: Previously on the same stretch of road: ‘Sheep killed in truck rollover near Garah’, 22nd February 2010…<<Dozens of sheep died and others were put down after a B-Double truck rolled over near Garah yesterday (Sunday).>>
Truck Crash at the corner of Roger St and Old Pittwater Rd Brookvale, on Sydney’s Northern Beaches
[Photo by Cameron Mitch, The Sunday Telegraph]
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<<Two people have escaped with minor injuries after the truck they were travelling in rolled over and caught on fire in Sydney’s north. The semi-trailer truck, which was carrying sand, rolled over about 8am on Old Pittwater Road in Brookvale, Fire and Rescue NSW said on Saturday.
“Two people escaped from the truck’s cabin before it caught fire,” Superintendent Tom Cooper told AAP. “The fire caused one of the truck’s 400 litre tanks of diesel to rupture and the diesel spilled into a storm water drain.”
Mar 2013: Two killed after B-Double and car collide head-on
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No chance at Ki Ki, South Australia
Picture: First On Scene Media Source: adelaidenow
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<<..In a shocking start to the Easter holidays, two people, both aged 22, believed to be Asian nationals living in Adelaide, died after the rental car they were driving crossed to the wrong side of the road and slammed into a B-Double truck on the Dukes Highway near Ki Ki (South Australia), just before 3am.
..Royal Automobile Association public affairs general manager Penny Gale said this stretch of highway accounted for a third of all the state’s road fatalities.
..Major Crash Investigation Section officer-in-charge Detective Inspector Peter Duance said it was a “tragedy” and he warned of the dangers of fatigue when driving in the early hours of the morning. “Sometimes, it’s a good idea to travel in the early hours because there is less traffic on the road but people need to remember to take appropriate rest breaks and share the driving if possible,” he said yesterday.
The deaths take the state’s road toll to 31 compared with 25 this time last year.
Mar 2013: B-Double carrying fertiliser rollover near Hummocks, SA
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<<Nobody was injured when a B-Double carrying fertiliser rolled onto its side on the Copper Coast Highway last Tuesday, March 19. Police were called to the accident about 2pm and put traffic restrictions in place which lasted until the scene was cleared six hours later. The crash happened just south of the Hummocks.
Mar 2013: “wobbling trailer” or Speed causes B-Double Rollover?
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B-Double rollover on the Cunningham Hwy at Maryvale
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<<The B-Double rollover on the Cunningham Hwy at Maryvale (north east of Warwick, south-eastern Queensland) on Saturday morning. One lane of the Cunningham Hwy was blocked at Maryvale from 6am Saturday until mid-afternoon after a B-Double rolled over. The truck was carrying general freight, including small motors and bags of grain.
A Warwick police spokesman said it was believed the rear trailer started to wobble which resulted in the whole vehicle turning over on one lane of the highway…Police said there was extensive damage to the prime mover.
There was also a single vehicle rollover at Pyramid’s Rd, Stanthorpe, at 12.45pm Saturday. No one was injured.
<<Motorists are experiencing extensive peak hour delays following a truck fire in the Sydney Harbour Tunnel. The fire started in the truck’s battery compartment, but the cause is still to be determined.
Traffic is banked up at both ends of the tunnel after a freightliner in the southbound lane caught on fire just after 4pm on Wednesday, activating a fire alarm and causing the closure of the tunnel.
A Transport Management Centre spokeswoman says motorists in the area are being diverted onto the Sydney Harbour Bridge, but there are extensive delays for northbound and southbound traffic. Emergency services are on site, and there is no forecast for when the tunnel will reopen.>>
A crash on the M4 freeway closed both lanes of traffic
[Source: Picture by Gregg Porteous, The Daily Telegraph]
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<<A multi-vehicle pile up on the M4 has closed the motorway in both directions. At least five vehicles, including two trucks collided near the intersection with Silverwater Rd about 1.15pm. …The accident left one ute on its roof, while two trucks hit the concrete median barrier pushing sections into the path of oncoming traffic.
Meanwhile, Sydney’s traffic woes have worsened with a broken down truck closing down the westbound tunnel of the M5 East. The tunnel was shut shortly after 2pm, with tow trucks enroute to clear the vehicle. But to make matters worse the usual detour route around the tunnel is also shut in both directions after a truck brought down powerlines on Stoney Creek Rd near the intersection of Mimosa St, Bexley.
.Truck on Fire on Hume Highway, near Yerrinbool
Photo by Petrina Price
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<<There are major delays for motorists on the Hume Hwy near Yerrinbool after a truck burst into flames this morning… just after 9.40am near Remembrance Drive.One of two southbound lanes is closed and traffic is queued for about 4.5km. Motorists are advised to avoid the area if possible.>>
Fire erupted in the trailers of the two trucks after they crashed on the Hume Highway near Yass
[Photo by ABC News]
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<<Northbound lanes of the Hume Highway north of Canberra remain closed after a fiery crash between two trucks. Fire erupted in the trailers of the vehicles after they collided about 10 kilometres from Yass just after 4:00am.
One of the truck drivers aged in his 50s suffered minor injuries and was taken to hospital. Firefighters had difficulty extinguishing a blaze in the paper cargo of one of the trucks.>>
Mar 2009: B-Double drags pedestrian 100 metres in hit-run
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Police gather evidence after a pedestrian was killed in a hit-run in Reservoir (Melbourne)
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<<Police say a female pedestrian was dragged 100 metres down the road in a fatal hit-and-run at Reservoir, in Melbourne’s north.
Police are questioning a 45-year-old man about the woman’s death, at the intersection of High Street and Broadhurst Avenue, about 10:30pm yesterday. The man was arrested at Epping early this morning.
Police say the B-Double prime mover and trailer stopped briefly after the collision, then took off. Sergeant Brendan Butland says the woman died at the scene.
“What’s occurred is tragic,” he said. “A lady was obviously standing on the street corner when the truck’s turned left. She’s been struck by the truck and has been dragged a hundred metres or so down the road, and it’s just tragic.”
McColl’s Milk Tanker slams at speed into a Parramatta Road cafe on the corner of Croydon Road, Croydon
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We didn’t have to wait long. Close to midnight last night, an out-of-control fully-laden milk tanker heading into Sydney along Parramatta Road, crossed over the centre concrete medium stip and slammed into a cafe, where residents were sleeping above. The prime mover then caught fire as it was wedged inside the cafe.
Milk Truck approach on eastbound side of Parramatta Road toward the Croydon Road intersection. Looking east along Parramatta Road toward the Croydon Road cafe (circled).More lanes and more trucks are making our highways more dangerous.
[Image construct via Google Maps, before the crash]
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The driver was probably on a linehaul service from Central West New South Wales delivering a milk load to Parmalat’s manufacturing plant at Lidcombe. The driver died on impact. Did he fall asleep like the Finemore’s driver driving through Medlow Bath around midnight on Sunday 12 May? (see lead post above).
It is yet another serious truck crash along the Great Western Highway corridor involving a trucking company based in Orange. In this case, McColl’s Milk Transport operates out of Orange at 8 Barret Street.
Did the 63 year old driver have a heart attack or stroke? How fit are these truck drivers? How often are they medically tested to operate such killing machines on our highways?
The RTA-come-RMS lets anyone get a truck licence these days. It Heavy Vehicle Competency Based Assessment programme is a joke.
The out of control truck hurtling on the wrong side of a six-laned Parramatta Road could have caused a head-on collision and killed many others, including the owners of the cafe. As it was, the main Sydney arterial Parramatta Road was closed in both directions for hours causing major delays during the busy Friday morning peak.
A year ago, a McColl’s B-Double milk truck collided with a Countrylink bus along on the Gwyder Highway halfway between Grafton and Glen Innes. It was about 3:30 pm, also on a Friday, on 10th February 2012. The Countrylink bus driver was killed and his passengers received minor injuries..
B-Double McColl’s milk truck over the double lines kills Countrylink bus driver on the Gwyder Highway in February 2012.
[Source: Photo by Debrah Novak, The Daily Examiner, from article ‘Fatal crash on Gwydir’, 20120210, Coffs Coast Advocate, ^http://www.coffscoastadvocate.com.au/news/fatal-bus-and-truck-accident/1267856/]
Government destruction of Bullaburra has begun. Last Monday, April Fools Day 2013, they came and killed Bullaburra’s magificent Angophora to make way for a trucking expressway through the village. But who are the fools who destroy our native heritage?
To many perhaps this is just another tree. Some people value trees and ecology. Others have deep value for wildlife and other animals, especially their pets. Many people value where they live and grow very attached to where they live for reasons that can seem difficult for others to appreciate. But it is the existence rights of species that humans ignore besides their own self-serving interests. Male Baby Boomers remain the most extreme in their self-righteousness, and those in government prescribe utilitarian dictates over the rights of the few.
Elie Wiesel, novelist, political activist, and Humanities Professor at Boston University, has said that the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of beauty is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, but indifference between life and death.
A native tree that once was part of an Angophora (Sydney Redgum) forest, existed way back when the three explorers Lawson, Wenthworth and Blaxland crossed the Blue Mountains in 1813. They would have passed right past this tree. Two years later road builder William Cox similarly would have laid his rough track, and in 1836 Major Mitchell upgrading the road too would have passed by this tree. For nearly two centuries travellers have passed by this tree, most probably not even giving it a glance. Now it is gone and the opportunity to respect and appreciate this remnant of natural heritage has gone with it.
We tried to save you
Campaign to Save Bullaburra’s 300 year old Angophora back in 2008
(Blue Mountains Gazette, 20081203)
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Last January, spiteful people set fire to two Hermmansburg ghost gums made famous in Albert Namatjira’s landscape paintings. In 2006, Barcaldine’s famous ghost gum, ‘the tree of knowledge’ was poisoned. Just last week an old gum tree in the Rylstone public school was poisoned. Human hate for native trees has pervaded Australian colonising society since Cook landed at Camp Cove and chopped down trees for firewood.
A local arborist with expertise in native trees of the Blue Mountains including Angophoras, estimated in 2007 that the Bullaburra Angophora to have been over 300 years old. It was still healthy and still growing as confirmed by the solid core of the severed trunk.
Now it lies like a dead harpooned whale like roadkill beside the highway, where it has stood all those decades.
This Angophora was recognised as a ‘Significant Tree‘ on the local Blue Mountains Council’s Significant Tree Register back on 17th July 1985 and formally adopted on 21st June 1988, at the time of Australia’s Bicentennary.
No opposition against killing the tree was communicated by the Blue Mountains Council to the RTA-come-RMS. Indeed, this is one of many such ‘significant trees’ that have been killed for development convenience in recent years. Clearly, the Blue Mountains Council’s Significant Tree Register has become disingenuous and lying greenwash.
The death of the Angophora is the begining of the end of Bullaburra. The highway village is set to become a siding for four-laned trucking expressway so that B-double trucks can rumble 24/7 through Blue Mountains towns and villages, nudging 90kph on cruise control.
The rural amenity of this highway village is to be lobotomised into a mono-design urban landscape taking on the same monotonous blandness as any other expressway in the country. The government euphemises this as:
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“to achieve greater consistency in the design of the Blue Mountains area to achieve a simple and unified design of the highway and its elements.”
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The fundamental basis for the government’s conversion of this regional highway into a national trucking expressway route is simply “to improve travel times” for trucks, so that more and larger trucks are encouraged to use the route.
The Bullaburrra section is to cost taxpayers $80 million and will see 3.6 hectares of native bushland destroyed on the basis that the vegetation “is already dissected and fragmented“. So it seems that moral relativism allows for wedge development just like a little bit of corruption doesn’t hurt anyone.
But as if the twisted morality isn’t bad enough. It is the greenwashing that really twists the knife in. The RTA-come-RMS in its Review of Environmental Effects maintains that the expressway development aims:
“to protect the natural systems and ecology of the corridor”
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[Source: ‘The Great Western Highway Upgrade – Bullaburra East, Review of Environmental Effects’, Vol.2, July 2009, Roads and Traffic Authority, New South Wales Government, p.2.]
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However, the expressway development will simply result in the heart of rural Bullaburra being ripped out and the amenity reduced to a trucking siding adopting a benale concrete landscape akin to the bland urban character of an upper Blaxland, and mirroring what has happened to nearby lobotomised Lawson.
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“It’s just really tragic after all the horrors of the last 1,000 years we can’t leave behind something as primitive as government sponsored execution.”
~ Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, when introducing a bill that would end the death penalty on the Federal level.
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Progress of Hate
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Under Australia’s Federal Auslink Policy the national freight thinking is road-centric and all about replacing real trains with road trains. Behind this trucking expressway scheme is a powerful and influential trucking lobby group who donate generously to the political parties that control the New South Wales Government, and various politicians including retired Blue Mountains MP Bob Debus, who has long been a driver of this trucking expressway.
The New South Wales Government department behind this scheme is the RTA-come-RMS (Roads and Maritime Services). In 2007, the then General Manager – Environmental Branch, Ms Erica Adamson, claimed that to retain the Angophora consequential loss of tree roots and pruning would instigate the decline of the tree. “For road construction and safety reasons the tree will have to be removed…to maintain sight lines (for speeding trucks).”
“It’s called progress” they say. For the Blue Mountains it is being inflicted at any cost – economic, social, environmental.
The idea of ‘progress‘ is an economic one that was borne out of Western 18th Century hard-nosed Industrial Revolution and perhaps extending back to the 16th Century Enlightenment of Europe and perhaps even back to when the Iron Age triumphed so aggressively and effectively over the Bronze Age.
Perhaps progress remains subjective only with the progressor who doggedly in his pursuit rough shods over others in the process. Perhaps the idea of progress is a myth. Is the human condition better off as a result? Are we advancing as a society by rough shodding over others and over what is left of Ecology and Nature? The philosophy of ‘^Deep Ecology‘ posits otherwise.
“Progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.”
Crushed between two large trucks on the Great Western Highway
Blue Mountains, New South Wales, Australia
[Photo by Top Notch Video, Blue Mountains Gazette, 20130213, p.9]
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The Great Western Highway over the Blue Mountains west of Sydney is becoming an increasingly dangerous thoroughfare as the New South Wales Government steadily transforms it into a faster expressway designed for larger trucks and increasing the B-Double menace.
This highway is a regional route to towns like Bathurst and Orange and passes through many small towns and villages. Yet the trucking lobby and State Government don’t care about local safety or amenity. The wider and faster expressway is just carved through each town and village in turn, preventing safe crossing, dividing communities and prioritising the commercial imperatives of express road freight over human lives.
Hardly a week goes by without the local newspaper, the Blue Mountains Gazette, reporting a serious collision along our Great Western Highway.
All too frequently such collisions occur on the already widened expressway sections that are sold to the community as ‘safety upgrades’. All too frequently across the State and the country, we read about collisions on these expressways that have involved trucks – trucks speeding, trucks tailgating, trucks exceeding weight limits, drunk or drugged up truck drivers under the pressure of unrealistic delivery deadlines all hours of the day and night.
Local people who use these regional roads are now forced to confront larger and faster trucks, and B-doubles with trailers, hurtling along nudging above increased speed limits brought in by government planners. Ordinary road users are now risking the lives of themselves and their passengers as they are forced to increasingly share regional roads with the B-Double Menace.
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Get out of my way! I’m on an unrealistic deadline!
(The B-Double Menace)
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Just over a week ago, on the Great Western Highway at Blackheath, a Sydney woman driving in her car mid Wednesday morning toward the town of Orange braked behind a large truck that suddenly stopped on the highway in front of her. She glanced in the rear vision mirror only in horror to see a second large truck bearing down on her at speed. It slammed in to the back of her car, pushing her car compressed up against the large truck in front of her.
The woman, 34 year-old Sarina Heta was sandwiched in contorted metal that was her car, unable to escape and lucky to be alive. Her wrecked car, a Kia Rio sedan, is shown in the top photo.
Ms Heta was trapped in her car in a state of shock for 45 minutes until rescued by and the Fire Brigade and paramedics.
<<Blue Mountains emergency services were called to the scene about 10.50am where they found the woman trapped in her car. She was treated by ambulance officers while other emergency services workers spent an anxious 45 minutes working to safely remove her from the vehicle. Ms Heta was flown by helicopter to Westmead Hospital where she was in a stable condition and already reflecting on her miraculous survival.>>
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“I remember just taking a big breath and taking the steering wheel and actually thinking it was over for me. I was a lucky girl that day with a group of angels looking over me. I just keep thinking, I must have done something good, or I have to do something amazing now I have another chance.” said Ms Heta.
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Ed: This poor woman. It is plainly unjust that ordinary road users should have to experience life-threatening encounters with dangerous trucks.
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So why did the first truck stop on the highway?
More importantly, why didn’t the second truck stop safely?
Was the truck driver distracted talking on his mobile phone as many of these drivers frequently are observed, without being caught?
Is the bastard still driving?
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There are few if any police patrolling the highway. There is only one speed camera on the Great Western Highway and that is at Warrimoo over 30km away. These truck drivers are cowboys racing through the Blue Mountains as if they’re on a raceway and they couldn’t care less about any other road users. Other road users just get in their way.
Ordinary Blue Mountains road users have constantly complained about truck driver behaviour along the Great Western Highway; yet the State Government, local politicians and the police do nothing.
One resident wrote on social media: “The trucks very rarely travel at 60km through the town. . . There is no point trying to out run them as they are more powerful and you end up exceeding the speed limit,” wrote Alex Michie. “The road is fine . . . it’s the halfwits driving on it that is the problem,” wrote Josh Steel.
Many of these large B-Double trucks cart sand, soil or rock into Sydney from quarry sites located in the Central West region of New South Wales. But when they are empty travelling out of Sydney, they rip along speeding over 90kph and tail-gating at all hours, menacing other road users.
A root cause of the truck speeding problem is that the truck drivers themselves are not paid by the hour. The transport industry remuneration structure has long surrendered Award-based pay for individual pay contracts. Truck drivers get paid not an hourly rate, but by the trip rate. The more trips a driver does, the more the driver gets paid, so speed has become a motivator for more pay.
This may make the job costing easier for the company accountants of the trucking companies or the corporate clients of the trucking companies, but it encourages unreasonably fast driving incentives which has dangerous implications for all road users, and the government allowing this must be held largely responsible and culpable.
Past local politician for the Blue Mountains, Bob Debus, approved hundreds of millions be spent transforming the regional highway into a trucking expressway a decade ago. This remains the State Government’s agenda.
Yet the Great Western Highway passes through twenty-one local communities over the Blue Mountains between the end of the M4 Motorway in outer Sydney and Lithgow, a road distance of 87km.
Lapstone
Glenbrook
Blaxland
Warrimoo
Valley Heights
Springwood
Faulconbridge
Linden
Woodford
Hazelbrook
Lawson
Bullaburra
Wentworth Falls
Leura
Katoomba
Medlow Bath
Blackheath
Mount Victoria
Hartley
Little Hartley
Old Bowenfels
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Many of these communities also have families and in many cases local schools. Many of these communities have their own 60kph maximum speed zones to allow for local street access, local traffic and indeed pedestrians of all ages. Many school crossings and school 40kph speed zones exist along the Great Western Highway. The encouragement of a 80kph trucking expressway transformation of the Great Western Highway is incongruent with its local use.
In some cases the government’s trucking expressway transformation of the highway has completely divided communities to the extent that there is no sign that a community even exists. When it was their turn, the communities of Lapstone and Linden succumbed entirely to the expressway imperative. Other communities are denied local vehicle access or access that is so contorted as to have made the local communities second rate citizens, like Warrimoo and now parts of Wentworth Falls.
When the expressway juggernaut came through town in Leura, Medlow Bath and Katoomba eight years or so ago, local properties were inundated by flash flooding caused directly by redirected highway stormwater design.
Recently Lawson and Hazelbrook have been witness to the bulldozing of heritage and amenity as the four lanes lobotomised their villages into a 80kph Blaxland byway.
As the expressway juggernaut arrives it carves through more native vegetation and habitat.
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Destruction in progress at Boddington Hill in early 2012, east of Wentworth FallsGreat Western Highway, Blue Mountains, NSW
(Photo by Editor 20120201, free in public domain, click photo to enlarge)
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Bullaburra residents sensibly got involved in the expressway process early, drafted their own re-design for their community and thought that had a special deal with the RTA-come-RMS. But although the clever Government consultants have listened, the RTA has got its way. The trucks will be able to set their cruise control to nudge 85kph through this bucolic Bullaburra..
The trucking companies would like to minimise their transit times across the Blue Mountains, simply because in transport, time is money.
A recent trucking strategy has been to introduce bigger trucks so that more can be carted by each driver. This is why the Blue Mountains has seen a steady increase in B-Doubles – rigid trucks with a bogie trailer. On designated motorways in New South Wales, these B-Doubles are 26 metres long. In western Victoria and South Australia, B-Triples have been allowed, basically equating to the Road Trains of Outback Australia.
Also, most of these newer trucks have more powerful turbo diesel engines so that they can travel faster with the increased gross weights.
The 87km Blue Mountains section of the Great Western Highway lies between the end of the M4 Motorway at Emu Plains where trucks can sit on 110kph and Lithgow, where the highway opens up to 100kph passing by very few communities.
It is this populated variable speed 87km section that is the bane of the trucking companies and so their lobbying target to government to transform it into a trucking expressway to serve them. If the designated average travel time over the 87km Blue Mountains section is say 1 hour and 20 minutes, the cumulative billions being spent to transform the Great Western Highway into a trucking expressway could at the absolute best expect to save just 20 minutes truck transit time. This is even if all traffic lights and pedestrian crossings were removed so that the trucks could cruise on 90kph, through this Blue Mountains section.
Cost benefit analysis? Has it been done by anybody?
The proposed Mount Victoria bypass is set to cost over a billion dollars alone, to save perhaps just 2 minutes truck transit time.
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The crazy planning Elephant in the Room that has been ignored in the wake of all these billions, is that once the trucks arrive in metropolitan Sydney, their transit times blow out in the congestion.
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Our Editor wrote the following article which was published in the local Blue Mountains Gazette 7th January 2009. It is pertinent, because within a 100 metres or so of the truck collision that impacted Sarina Heta this month, another woman, Blackheath resident Betty Dowdell, was not so lucky.
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Faster trucks Bob?
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<<Blackheath resident Betty Dowdell was hit and run by a semi last month less than a truck length from Blackheath’s main intersection [SMH 16/12/08]. On 18th November a B-double caused a pile up on Richmond Road. Drug utensils were allegedly found in the driver’s compartment [SMH 19/11/08].
On 24 July around 3pm between Lawson and Bullaburra a Volvo B-double driver “lost control of the vehicle and collided head-on with a white light goods van heading west.” The 56-year-old Leura man driving the van was killed. [BMG 30/7/08].
On 3 October at 9.15am, a motorcyclist collided head-on with a semi-trailer on the wrong side of the Bells Line of Road at Mt Tomah [AAP 4/10/08]. On 29 March last year, a semi driver over-turned at Mt Vic. In 2004, on 25 February at 11pm a semi laden with mixed chemicals failed to negotiate a sharp bend at the bottom of Mt Vic pass. The truck rolled, killing the driver and spilling a load of hydrochloric acid and herbicide.
I recall driving back from Mt Tomah a few years ago with my family. An oncoming truck was well over the double lines and I was forced onto the gravel shoulder to avoid a head-on.
Speeding traffic is making our two highways more dangerous. Highway patrols and speed cameras are almost non-existent in the Mountains. Many collisions occur on sections of the highway that are already four lanes. Government policies are encouraging more, and bigger trucks to drive faster while rail options remain ignored.
Why is our federal member Bob Debus MP encouraging faster trucks through the Mountains?>>
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Just because highways are transformed into expressways, doesn’t make them safer.
This is the six-laned M4 motorway at Emu Plains.
A truck driver not concentrating, wiped out and killed cyclists out for a ride in the cycle lane.
10th April 2010.
May they rest in peace.
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Footnote
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On the other side of the M4 motorway from the above cyclist collision at Emu Plains, but this time heading east, a cyclist in the cycle lane was hit and killed by a car.
Blue Mountains resident, Marc Simone, 43, was cycling in the cycle lane at 7:30am Saturday 16th February 2013, when an incompetent P-plater veered and hit and killed Marc.
Marc had been training to cycle over 3,900 km to Darwin to raise money for Mission Australia.
[Source: ‘Marathon Mission Ends in Tragedy’, 20130220, journalist B.C. Lewis, Blue Mountains Gazette newspaper, p.1]
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[Ed: Any highway, motorway or road that has ‘cycle lanes’ are death traps unless there is a concrete barrier keeping reckless and incompetent vehicle drivers killing cyclists.]
‘A man has been fined after being stopped by police for allegedly speeding in the state’s Southern Highlands.
About 5.44am yesterday (Monday 5 March 2012), police were patrolling the (6-laned) Hume Highway at Mittagong, when they allegedly detected a white B-double (truck) travelling at a speed of 142kph in an 110kmh zone. They stopped the vehicle a short distance away and issued the 41-year-old male driver with a traffic infringement for exceed speed over 30km/h.
The fine for the offence is $1112.
[Ed: A poultry slap on the wrist fine? When 60+ tonnes is hurtling along the road at 142kph, how is this not attempted murder?]
Killer on the Road
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Mar 2012: ‘Fatal head-on in NSW’ (south of Oberon)
[Source: ‘Fatal head-on in NSW’, bigpondnews, Saturday, March 31, 2012, ^http://bigpondnews.com/articles/National/2012/03/31/Fatal_head-on_in_NSW_734843.html]
‘A truck driver has been killed, and three men have been airlifted to hospital, after two trucks collided head-on near Oberon, west of Sydney.
Police say the Isuzu table top truck and Mack prime mover logging truck crashed on Abercrombie Road, at Black Springs just before midnight (AEDT).
The Isuzu driver, aged in his 30s, died at the scene. Two other men inside suffered head and chest injuries, while the driver of the other truck, aged in his 60s, has an injury to his leg. Abercrombie Road is expected to remain closed until around 7am (AEDT).’
Typical prime mover logging truck (empty)
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Jul 2009: Recall the fatal truck crash east of Oberon three years ago…
‘One man died and another was airlifted to a Sydney hospital after a car and truck crashed head-on near Oberon yesterday afternoon.
Emergency services received reports about 1.12pm of a car hitting a truck on the Duckmaloi Road near Fearndale Road on the Sydney side of Oberon. Ambulance officers arrived and began treating the men involved in the accident. The passenger of the car was declared dead at the scene.
The 20-year-old male driver of the car was airlifted to Westmead Hospital with multiple fractures to his legs, arms and chest as well as head injuries. The truck driver was assessed by ambulance officers and did not require hospitalisation. Late last night the Duckmaloi Road was still close to non-residential traffic as spilt fuel and debris was cleaned from the site.
An Oberon trucker driver, who wished to remain anonymous, later said the Duckmaloi Road needed to be seriously looked at due to the large amount of traffic it carried.
“Along with the Bathurst road it is one of the two main veins into Oberon,” he said. “I believe around 200 trucks a day would use that road to get from Oberon to Sydney and back again.”
The truck driver added that for people who did not frequently use the Duckmaloi Road it could be very dangerous. “It can be bloody treacherous if you don’t know it,” he said.
“In one day I think we send about 50 trucks out and have 50 trucks come back in on it [the Duckmaloi Road]. “If you also add in the log trucks and the chip trucks than you would easily have 200 trucks a day on that road.”
[Ed: Two years later, $395,000 from the Australia Government went into widening the Duckmaloi Road. ^Read More]
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Fatal truck head-on near Oberon, NSW (2009)
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2012: Great Western Highway – Wentworth Falls East ‘trucking upgrade’
No 1 Feature: “Widening the highway to four lanes with sealed shoulders“!
No 1 Benefit: “Quicker journeys – in the region and to Sydney“!
‘Delays are expected today on a section of the Hume Highway in NSW after a crash involving two trucks near Marulan. NSW Police says a B-double carrying furniture rolled about 5km south of Marulan at 12.45am, spilling its load and blocking all northbound lanes. A semi-trailer travelling behind crashed into the rear of the truck…’
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Jul 2011: Near the same spot a year before..’Fatal crash near Marulan’
‘A report will be prepared for the coroner following a fatal highway crash near Marulan in the early hours of the morning.
About 12.45am this morning a B-double truck travelling north on the Hume Highway left the road and plunged into a deep roadside gully, rolling on to its side and taking out trees and a 10-meter section of guard rail in the process. The cause of the crash is still unknown and police investigations are continuing. No one else was injured in the crash.
The driver, a 47-year-old man from Glenfield, suffered severe injuries and died at the scene. He was travelling from Albury to Sydney when the accident occurred approximately 15km north of Goulburn.
[Ed: All night 60+ tonne all night bats out of hell and 60+ tonne all night zombies being driven to death by greedy retailers demanding pre-dawn delivery times. Overnight linehaul is al about unnatural sleep depravation. It is death waiting to happen. Driving on Australian highways aafter midnight has become Russian Roulette death wish to all road users. Meanwhile, Australian Truckers Association chairman David Simon says the government should also be encouraging more “AB-triples” — which are 51m long — and “BAB-quads”, which are two connected B-doubles.” [Read More]
Why have railway tracks, when trucking companies keep adding carriages and ring feeders?
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Mar 2012: B-Double truckers tampering with speed governors
[Source: ‘Police blitz on trucks widens’, by AAP, 20120307, ^http://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/article/2012/03/07/453455_machine.html]
“Faster, faster..you’re a good operator!”
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‘New South Wales police have seized two South Australian trucks as part of a crackdown on unsafe practices in the road transport industry. Officers in NSW had intercepted 13 trucks from Scott’s Transport Industries as of today in a nationwide blitz on the Mt Gambier-based firm, which operates a fleet of 322 trucks and is suspected of serious safety breaches.
NSW police launched Operation Overland after one of the company’s B-doubles was detected travelling at 142kph on Monday.
An analysis of the company’s trucks’ movements has shown speeding by 32 of them.
Superintendent Stuart Smith said the two trucks were stopped after being identified as having defects, but it was too early to say if the defects were the result of tampering.
He said more of the company’s vehicles would be targeted for interception and comprehensive mechanical inspections.
“It’s not the 300, but it’s a large number,” Superintendent Smith said. “There’s a large number to go and the operation will continue for a number of days.”
Further actions by NSW Roads and Maritime Services will likely lead to a prosecution and significant fines.
Premier Barry O’Farrell said transport companies had been warned checks would become more regular. “Trucking companies should understand that what was then unprecedented action would become more regular if we had suspicions that there were cowboys driving trucks across the state’s roads, that it was likely to cause safety concerns for motorists,” Mr O’Farrell told reporters in Sydney.
Police have said an investigation of Lennons Transport Services, based in Sydney’s inner west, found eight trucks had been tampered with, including seven that had been modified to exceed the maximum speed of 100km/h. They have also charged a Lennons’ driver with dangerous driving causing the deaths of three members of one family on January 24.
Calvyn Logan, 59, and his elderly parents Donald and Patricia Logan, in their 80s, were killed when a Lennons‘ B-double truck careered onto the wrong side of the Hume Highway, near Menangle in southwest Sydney.
B-double truck driver Vincent Samuel George (33) killed three members of one family with his B-Double.
Court records also revealed that between 1998 and last year, George had his licence suspended five times and he has been convicted of 17 offences, including speeding and drink driving.
[^http://www.truckinlife.com.au/articles/2012/truck-collision-menangle-bridge]
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Police allege the driver’s truck had been tampered with to make it go faster.
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The RMS has also filed a series of summons in the NSW Supreme Court relating to driver fatigue at South Penrith Sand and Soil.
RMS alleges a series of offences relating to drivers’ work hours, rest hours and fatigue management. A cyclist was killed and three were injured after a truck driver working for the company veered into a breakdown lane and hit them on the M4 motorway on April 10, 2010.
The driver pleaded guilty last week to manslaughter.
Sydney’s M4: this is supposedly an RMS cycle lane
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Recall, RMS ‘upgrade features‘ at its Great Western Highway Wentworth Falls East section include:
“Improved cyclist access and safety – access for commuter and long distance cyclists will be provided by a 2.5 metre shoulder between Nelson and Dalrymple avenues.”
Try riding a bicycle through the Leura section, just up the Great Western Highway from Wentworth Falls
Spot the cycle lane…Russian Roulette anyone?
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Great Western Highway – being transformed into a trucking expressway so that bigger and more trucks can travel faster, all night long..Trucking Expressways are the antithesis of road safety
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Mar 2012: ‘Twelve more trucks had speeds tampered’
Another 12 trucks have been discovered with tampered speed limiters during a two-state police probe into dodgy practices (Ed: read ‘criminally culpable‘) in the industry.
Police inspecting Lennons Transport Services B-Double truck
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‘Operation Overland’
Operation Overland was launched into Scott’s Transport Industries on Monday. Ninety-eight of the South Australian transport company’s fleet of 322 heavy vehicles have since been intercepted for mechanical inspection.
On Thursday, police said they had found six trucks with tampered speed limiters. A day later, 12 more had been discovered, taking the total to 18.
Overall, 71 offences have been identified, including two trucks found to be overloaded.
Almost 70 defect notices have been issued. The probe into Scott’s Transport Industries began after one of its drivers was clocked travelling at 142km/h on the Hume Highway at Mittagong about 5.45am (AEDT) on Monday.
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Earlier this year, police swooped on Lennons Transport Services, in Sydney’s inner-west, where they discovered eight tampered trucks, including seven modified to exceed the 100km/h maximum.
Police Blitz at Lennons Transport Services
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It came after a Lennons driver was charged with dangerous driving causing the deaths of Calvyn Logan, 59, and his elderly parents Donald and Patricia Logan, in their 80s.
The truckie’s B-double allegedly careered onto the wrong side of the Hume Highway near Menangle and crashed into the trio’s car.
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Feb 2011: ‘Man dies after trucks collide on Hume Freeway, Baddaginnie’
Six-laned Hume Freeway – the wider and faster the expressway…All night trucking zombies
[Photo: Jon Hargest, Herald Sun]
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‘A man has died following a collision between two trucks on the Hume Freeway in Baddaginnie (Ed: Victoria, just south of the NSW border) just after midnight.
It’s believed one driver lost control of his truck which rolled onto the freeway moments before a second truck collided with it at 12.08am.
The driver of the second truck died and police are investigating the cause of the collision. The identity of the dead man is yet to be established.
The Hume Freeway is closed northbound at Violet Town and diversions are in place.’
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Comments:
Patrick of Rooney (20110215):
“Wake up and sip the coffee Victoria! We need thousands more speed cameras out there!”
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Andrew of Flemington (20110215):
“Worksafe Victoria, where are you?? Another tragic death caused by unsafe work practices. How many more deaths and injuries must occur before you finally step in?
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Feb 2011: ‘Logging truck driver kills car driver stopped at traffic lights outside Bathurst’
[Source: ‘One killed in truck crash‘, by Jo Johnson, Western Advocate, 20110201, ^http://www.westernadvocate.com.au/news/local/news/general/one-killed-in-truck-crash/2062626.aspx]
Media news often doesn’t travel outside one’s local area, so other Australians don’t realise the extent of the trucking carnage being inflicted across the country..Who says truck drivers are ‘professionals’?
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‘A 59-year-old local man is dead and two others seriously injured after a truck ploughed into three cars stopped at roadworks traffic lights on the O’Connell Road yesterday. The tragedy occurred at lunchtime, about 15 kilometres south of Bathurst.
Emergency services rushed to the scene to find people trapped in their cars. The road was immediately closed to traffic in both directions. Initial investigations have revealed that an unladen logging truck struck the vehicles, which were all making their way towards Bathurst at the time.
Police, ambulance and fire and rescue crews were called to the crash site at about 12.30pm. An air ambulance helicopter landed on the road near the accident to provide additional assistance.
Bathurst police Inspector Ross Wilkinson confirmed the driver of a red Toyota Camry died at the scene. He was a 59-year-old male from the O’Connell region.
The logging truck was travelling north when it slammed into the rear of the Toyota Camry, killing the man and seriously injuring a female passenger.
The driver of the next car in line, a silver Mazda Astina, was also in a serious condition yesterday afternoon, while the driver of a bronze Holden Rodeo was taken to Bathurst Base Hospital for observation.
Inspector Wilkinson said Chifley Local Area Command’s crash investigation unit attended the scene and investigations into the fatality would continue. The driver of the logging truck was uninjured and is helping police with their inquiries.
Traffic was diverted via Brewongle and The Lagoon and drivers heading to Oberon from Bathurst late yesterday afternoon were advised to divert at Hartley via Jenolan Caves Road.
The roadworks were being carried out by the NSW Roads and Traffic Authority (Ed: recently rebranded ‘RMS’) , between the Wests Lane turn-off to Brewongle and Ridge Road.
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Feb 2010: ‘Speeding B-Double Blayney Cattle Truck Rolls Over – kills/maims 21 cattle’
Injured cattle shot after speeding cattle truck overturned on bend near Blayney (Central NSW)
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Traffic between Blayney and Bathurst was detoured through Millthorpe yesterday after a semi-trailer cattle truck overturned while negotiating a sharp left bend about three kilometres out of Blayney.
Drivers on the Mid Western Highway had to slow to avoid runaway cattle after the accident on the outskirts of Blayney shortly after 11am.
Inspector Ross Wilkinson from Chifley Area Command said that police were continuing their investigations into the cause of the accident that disrupted highway traffic for four hours and killed 21 of the 96 cattle on board the truck.
“Police will issue an infringement notice to the truck driver at a later stage,” he said. “It’s a timely reminder for drivers to take care when driving in the changing weather conditions.” [Ed: Yet another dangerous coyboy truckie gets but a slap on the wrist. The driver deserves a custodial sentence for recklessly causing pain and suffering to the cattle, and barred from cattle truck driving for life].
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The road between Bathurst and Blayney was closed for 30 minutes while cranes were brought in to lift the truck back onto the road. RTA workers, who were among the first at the accident scene, began directing traffic and slowing motorists down to avoid the cattle before police arrived.
“We’ve been trying to keep things flowing,” one RTA worker said. “A couple of steers got away but they’ve pretty well got them under control.”
Blayney Shire Council overseer, Paul Wade, said that Blayney Shire Council staff were working with the RTA to divert Bathurst bound traffic through Millthorpe. Mr Wade said that council staff worked with the emergency services and the truck’s driver to help control the traffic and move the surviving cattle into a nearby paddock. The council’s ranger euthanized a number of cattle at the scene…
Yesterday’s accident is the second time a semi-trailer has overturned on the same winding stretch of road on the outskirts of Blayney in recent months. On January 28 traffic on the highway was disrupted for four hours when a semi-trailer travelling towards Blayney overturned while negotiating a left bend near yesterday’s accident scene.
Play Video (Prime News):
Click image to play video
(when running, double click on video to enlarge)
NB. The Rural Fire Service at Canobolas have since deleted the above video, so here is one from Channel 9:
All night truck driving solo – another dead truck driver
The driver of this B-Double was killed when it hit an embankment on the Pacific Highway near Corindi (Ed: north of Coffs Harbour) on Friday night
[Photo by Frank Reward]
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A man was killed in an horrific crash near Dirty Creek, west of Corindi, on Friday night in what is amounting to a horror weekend on NSW roads.
A B-Double being driven by the 48-year-old man, from Queensland, had been travelling south on the Pacific Highway when it appears to have left the road and crashed into an embankment.
According to a police statement, police and emergency services were called to the crash just after 11pm where the driver, the sole occupant of the truck, had suffered serious injuries and died at the scene. According to the statement, the impact of the crash had detached the two trailers from the prime mover, but no further details were available last night…
This crash adds another death to the mounting NSW road toll with the number rising to eight since the start of the long weekend, five more than for the same long weekend last year.
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Mar 2007: Hume Highway again.. ‘head-on truck crash kills driver’
A fatal truck crash has closed the Hume Highway near Coolac, in southern NSW. Two trucks collided head-on on the highway, sparking fires in both cabs, about 6.15am (AEDT) today, police said. The driver of a semi-trailer, carrying groceries north on the highway, died at the scene after rescue efforts failed to save him. The driver of a southbound truck, carrying metal, escaped with minor injuries…
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Ed: The Truck Menace is blatantly out of control. ‘Industry self-regulation’ never works and is nothing but a costing cutting government cop out. Meanwhile Australian Liberal Labor governments continue to pour billions of taxpayers’s money into building bigger and faster dedicated trucking expressways. And so the trucks get bigger and faster and Australia’s highway carnage of families continues unabated…
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Watch video:
(includes sound)
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Postcript:
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Well we didn’t have to wait bloody long. The day after posting this article there was another B-double multiple fatality…dead driver, dead and maimed cattle under his care…
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Speeding truckie hooning a fully laden B-Double cattle truck, loses it on bend – kills himself and the cattle
‘A salvage operation continued into last night to remove a laden cattle truck that crashed into the Tangaratta Creek Bridge near Tamworth yesterday, claiming the life of the driver.
Oxley Highway was closed for hours as emergency crews worked at the scene, first freeing the driver’s body from the truck’s cabin, which had been crushed against the bridge pylons, and then removing dead cattle and the truck from the scene.
The B-double truck left the road and rolled at the bridge on the Oxley Highway, about 10km west of the city, about 3pm. Police believe the truck was travelling south, bound for Cargill abattoir at Tamworth, when it lost control on a sweeping bend that has been the scene of other serious accidents over the years. [Sky News: Police said the vehicle failed to negotiate a right-hand bend near Tangaratta Bridge, causing it to roll down an embankment.]
An off-duty police officer was first on the scene.
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Police officers euthanased distressed cattle that had been crushed or injured in the trailers, which rested on their sides near the creek.
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Oxley Local Area Command duty officer, Inspector Jeff Budd, said the recovery effort was expected to continue late into last night. He said firefighters had set up booms to contain the diesel spill in the creek.
…Yesterday’s fatal crash happened at the same bridge where a horrific bus accident occurred on January 5, 1992, claiming the lives of five people. A double-decker Pioneer bus en route from Brisbane to Melbourne slammed into the bridge on a Saturday night. The crash claimed the lives of an eight-year-old girl, as well as three women and a man.
Inspector Budd said police were continuing their investigations into the cause of yesterday’s crash and a report would be prepared for the coroner.’
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Meanwhile pig carcasses have been scattered over a motorway in Sydney’s southwest after two trucks collided early today. Police say the heavy vehicles crashed shortly after 2am on the M7 westlink motorway at Prestons, near the Bernera Road off-ramp. The truck carrying the pig carcasses rolled, throwing the meat all over the road.
Pig carcasses picked up off M7
http://www.skynews.com.au/national/article.aspx?id=735802&vId=
Freeway’s narrow shoulders – obvious death traps
Site of another truck killing – this time the Hume Freeway near the Bowral turnoff, New South Wales
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Another week, another truck “cleaning up people” on trucking expressways. Expressways with more and faster trucks are more dangerous.
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Not an unusual breakdown:
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A young woman travelling south in her car along the Hume Freeway suddenly experiences her car overheating on the Southern Highlands section. The woman rightly pulls over into the left service lane (‘freeway shoulder‘) and she rightly calls the NRMA roadside breakdown service for mechanical assistance.
The NRMA rightly attends the breakdown incident and the mechanic arranges for a vehicle tow. The NRMA subcontracts the tow operation out to local Mittagong-based tow truck operator, Highlander Towing. Owner-operator, Geoffrey Clark, rightly attends with his vehicle tray truck and parks in front of the woman’s car in the service lane. At this section of the Hume, the freeway shoulder is substandard in width and so the towing operation protrudes into the outside freeway lane. The breakdown location is later confirmed by attending police that it was situated on a long straight section of the Hume having a good 500 metre visibility to south approaching traffic.
The tow truck had been tipped in readiness to pull the broken down car on to its tray just before the accident. It is believed Mr Clark and the woman were standing on the roadside of their parked vehicles when a southbound truck struck both Geoffrey and the woman at freeway speed. It is about 12:40pm (midday on a clear day). Both Mr Clarke and the still unidentified young woman died at the scene.
Crash investigators were last night trying to work out how the truck failed to see the woman’s maroon-coloured car and Mr Clark’s truck on the side of the road. It is branded a ‘double fatality’. Traffic is stopped causing congestion. Police and paramedics attend, and the scene is assessed for the coroner.
These two people just going about their normal business suddenly and wrongly have become road ‘statistics’. Statistics for the authorities to collate and report. .
‘Police said the truck literally cleaned up the two people’
~ The Daily Telegraph (Sydney).
“What chance would anyone have when a truck doing at least 100 kph comes at them?” a police spokesman said.
Yes, roads are dangerous, fast freeways moreso. Cars kill, but trucks kill more easily offering less chance of survival for other road users. When a shoulder on a six laned interstate freeway is designed too narrow to allow safe clearance from high speed traffic, that freeway shoulder is surely a death trap waiting to happen.
Breakdowns beware? If a vehicle breaks down it is involuntary. A driver does not have a choice of continuing on until there is a safe place to pull over, since the vehicle won’t go.
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The truck killing of two pedestrians is reported to have been horrific. Geoffrey Clark was aged in his 40s and reportedly a father of four. The media have not yet reported the family circumstances of the young woman at the time of publishing today.
Ave atque vale Geoffrey Clark, Tow Truck Operator, father-of-four, and the unidentified standed woman motorist who Geoff dutifully went to assist
(I write that your passings not be in vain)
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According to media reports, Geoffrey Clark, every time a stranded motorist would call him for help, Geoffrey Clark would drop everything and race to their aid. The tow truck company owner and father-of-four was doing exactly that yesterday when he and a female motorist he was helping were run down and killed instantly.
Mr Clark, who operated Highlander Towing, was attending to a broken down Ford sedan in a lane of the Hume Freeway at Mittagong in New South Wales when he was hit by a truck.
The truck driver, from Barnetts courier company (see previous photo of truck ), was taken to hospital with shock.
Distraught employees and friends last night said Mr Clark was a “one in a million” boss who never said no.
“He’d happily go out to help someone in the middle of the night, that’s Geoff,” one employee said. “He was always ready to help, no matter who they were.”
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Highlander Towing – customer testimonies
‘Prompt and Friendly Service’
(posted by Mun Lum at Tuesday 26 April 2011)
“Our car broke down in Robertson and the company (NRMA recommended) came out fairly promptly and was very helpful in providing advice on where the car can be towed to and repaired. It was over the Easter long weekend and the workshop was not open so they offered to store it at their place until the workshop opened. Great and friendly service. Thoroughly recommended.”
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‘Highlander Towing’
(posted by Anonymous User at Thursday 30 April 2009)
“Great blokes, Great Service, Highly Recommended”
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‘Highlander Towing’
(posted by R Maclean at Sunday 18 February 2007)
“I got stranded at Sutton Forest having hit a wombat and my car had to be towed. The guys at Highlander were great – they arrived quickly, stored the car in their warehouse and found me a motel at 1.30 am (all in a black out in Mittagong). The next day they arranged for the car to be trucked to Sydney and I caught a lift with the car. The two guys I encountered were nice blokes (Ray and John) – as a lone female I was a little anxious about who was going to turn up at midnight. I needn’t have worried – Ray who went out of his way to be helpful. Thanks for the help guys, it is much appreciated.”
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It was the same fatal stretch of the freeway, which last month claimed the lives of three members of the Logan family in another tragic truck accident.
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RTA meets budget by skimping on safe freeway shoulders
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RTA’s Budget Shoulder Contingency
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The pattern of cost blowouts by the RTA’s Major Infrastructure projects must be legion. Its failure to factor in inclement weather contingency and the poor operational management of subcontractors are typical excuses for its record of material cost overruns. But the RTA has long relied upon an internal engineering contingency that enables it to meet the external budget irrespectively.
It works like this – over the lineal distance of a major freeway upgrade project, every metre of widening costs millions. The multiplier effect of highway/freeway/expressway construction is considerable for every inch that is made wider. Freeway shoulders represent the extremes of that widening.
So over an entire project if the freeway shoulder width is trimmed, total project costs can be reduced substantially. So when vague budget cost estimates show signs of blowing out, such freeway shoulders are the contingency that are trimmed in width and thus cost. And who’s going to notice outside RTA internal design engineering?
Voila! Project on budget and management bonuses paid thank you very much. But tell that to the families of the two innocent people mentioned above who were yesterday using the RTA’s ‘high standard’ interstate six-laned dual carriage Hume Freeway.
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Narrow freeway shoulders are designed death traps
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But the narrowing of freeway shoulders may save money but compromises safety. Given that standard truck width is 2.5 metres, all freeway shoulders that are gazetted as designated truck routes for safety reasons need to be designed with at width to safety accommodate a truck of 2.5 metres in width.
The Hume Freeway is one of Australia’s major inter-city highways, running for 880 km between Sydney and Melbourne. It is part of the Auslink National Network and is a vital link for road freight to transport goods to and from the two cities as well as serving Albury-Wodonga and Canberra. At this section through the New Spouth Wales Southern Highlands, the Hume is a six-laned dual carriageway freeway not a highway, which permits a speed limit of 110kpm, it demands a higher standard of safety design. There needs to be an added margin of clearance between a stationary vehicle parked on a freeway shoulder and the traffic including trucks doing 110kph.
Clearly, freeway shoulders on such high speed routes need to have a minimum safety width greater than 2.5 metres.
The RTA (TRMS) is responsible for providing safe freeways to the travelling public and so the RTA the owes all freeway users a general duty of care out of its freeway design including the provision of a safe freeway shoulders. The RTA exercises control over the Hume Freeway, is responsible for its design including adequate freeway shoulders.
In this case of the tragic deaths of the two people on the Hume Freeway yesterday, the RTA has breached that duty of care by providing an unsafe freeway shoulder both from an occupational perspective in the case of the tow truck operator performing a breakdown operation, as well as to freeway users in general. The narrow 1.5 metre freeway shoulder created an obvious and unacceptible danger for any vehicle parked on it that measured over 1.5 metres in width, such as the tow truck (at closer to 2.5 metres in length).
It was the same fatal stretch of the freeway which last month claimed the lives of three members of the Logan family in another tragic truck accident.
Great Western Expressway…the Liberal-Labor Government’s Trucking Expressway Vision for the Blue Mountains
(Note the narrow shoulders)
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The Trucking Expressway Vision – a legacy of Bob Debus MP
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Perpetual Four Lanes dividing Blue Mountains communities
Narrow Shoulder Death Traps
Unmonitored Continuous 80kph, so nudging 90kph
Anti-Pedestrian, anti-Schools through towns and villages
Anti-Wildlife through so-called ‘World Heritage’
All for bigger, longer, faster trucks and more of them
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March 2011: Truck hit and run of pedestrian on F3 Freeway
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A year ago police were called to investigate the discovery of human remains thought to be those of a male on the F3 Freeway near Somersby on the NSW central coast.
On 1st March 2011, human body parts were found strewn across two lanes in what police suspected of a truck hit and run accident. Police were reported searching the area near the Gosford off-ramp north of Sydney, after a motorist reported the gruesome find about 11.45pm near midnight.
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Revelations: 1990 ‘NSW Heavy Vehicle Crash Study’ by Monash University
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In 1990, the Australian Federal Office of Road Safety (Canberra) together with the New South Wales Safety Bureau commissioned a study to examine the cause of crashes involving heavy vehicles in New South Wales between 1988-89 and to suggest countermeasures.
In summary, the findings of the study by the Monash University Accident Research Centre in 1990 found that factors that contributed to producing a severe truck crash environment in NSW included undivided highways of poor standard (including narrow shoulders). The study’s recommended counter-measures from the study included road improvements (at blackspots, delineation, road shoulders, culvert protection).
What recommendations of the 1990 Monash Report did the RTA implement and where, and not implement and where?
Why does Australia’s possibly busiest national truck route, the Hume, have substandard freeway shoulder widths to allow for a standard truck, let alone allow for a width of necessary safety margin to separate high speed traffic and breakdown vehicles parked in the shoulder?
What is the RTA’s standard procedure for addressing vehicle breakdowns on the Hume, notably along the Southern Highlands section of the Hume?
If standard procedure was followed in this case by both the NRMA and the towing company, how is the NSW RTA (NSW Transport Road and Marine Services) not liable for breaching its public duty of care and contributing to the tragic deaths of these two freeway users going about their ordinary business?
Sarah Frazer was finally about to fulfil her dream, which was to study in pursuit of her great passion – photography. ”My car is pretty much all packed up except for my bedlinen and a few loose ends,” the 23-year-old wrote to her aunt on a Facebook page.
But less than 24 hours later, not long after she started out on her ”newest adventure”, she was killed on her way to university in Wagga Wagga. Her faithful car, brimming with her possessions, had failed her when she needed it most, breaking down along the way. Ms Frazer and the man who came to her aid on the Hume Highway were both killed instantly on Wednesday when a truck failed to see them until it was too late. A tow-truck driver and well regarded southern highlands local, Geoff Clark, had rushed to Ms Frazer’s aid when her car broke down on a narrow stretch of the highway, about two kilometres from Mittagong.
Her car could fit only partly in the road’s shoulder, and the two were trying to prepare it for towing. It is believed the truck driver may simply have seen the two vehicles too late.
Ms Frazer, from Springwood in the Blue Mountains and a former student at St Columba’s High School, was described yesterday as ”a truly amazing person”.
”A world traveller, fearless, funny, kind, strong willed, bright and beautiful,” her aunt Kristina wrote on Facebook.
”She was my niece and my friend. I will miss her terribly.”
Another relative described his family’s grief on such a ”very sad day”, saying his ”beautiful, intelligent cousin” had died ”on her way to start a new life” at university.
Police are investigating the crash and the truck driver is assisting with inquiries. The driver was treated for shock at Bowral Hospital.
Mr Clark, a father of four young boys aged 8 to 14, was hailed as a good Samaritan for stopping on the dangerous strip of the highway and volunteering to drive Ms Frazer to Wagga Wagga.
Inspector Mark Wall, from Bowral police, who knew Mr Clark, said he was ”a hard worker and a good bloke”. He had been a truck driver for most of his life before starting his own towing business eight years ago. His widow, Sam, told reporters: ”He was a very caring husband. Thoughtful, just the best really … he did all that he could do to be safe.”
Sarah Frazer
Ed: Too young. It is not right. Our highways and freeways need to be safer.
No chance!A B-Double crosses the wrong side of the Hume Highway and slams head-on into a car killing all three occupants
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Last Friday, a brick-laden truck crossed a grass embankment, crashed through a guard rail and ended up on the opposite side of the Menangle Bridge on the Hume Highway south of Sydney. It slammed head-on into a car killing the three people inside.
It is only a matter of time before such a tragedy befalls the Great Western Highway in the Blue Mountains as more and more B-Doubles ply this regional route.
Driving along many highways throughout Australia has become deadly as more and bigger trucks travel faster just a metre away on the other side of a white line or two. Not only are there more semi-trailers, but trucking companies are increasingly putting larger capacity B-double trucks on the road, which can weigh over 70 tonnes.
When 70 tonnes hits you it is an instant wall of death.
A speeding semi ploughs into the front yard of a home in Rosanna, in eastern Melbourne on 21st September 2010
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Yet both Liberal and Labor governments at both national and state level are pouring billions of taxpayer dollars to facilitate more road freight on Australian highways, while ignoring the comparative line haul efficiencies and inherent safety of rail freight.
In 1998, the New South Wales Labor Government announced a 12-year $360 million ‘upgrade’ of the Great Western and Mitchell Highways between Penrith (outer Sydney) and Orange in the central west of NSW. In addition, the Federal Liberal-National Coalition Government committed an extra $100 million as part of its Auslink National Network.
The ‘upgrade’ meant transforming the two lane regional highway over the Blue Mountains into a four lane 80kph expressway to facilitate greater and faster trucking – a ‘trucking expressway‘. The then promoted features of this new trucking expressway were to be:
Widening of the highway to a four lane, divided road between Penrith and Katoomba
Widening the highway to mostly three lanes between Katoomba and Mount Victoria (including Blackheath)
Providing additional overtaking lanes along stretches of the highway
Improving pedestrian and traffic facilities at intersections crossing the highway in townships
providing bicycle facilities along the highway
Extensive landscaping and urban design initiatives within Blue Mountains towns and villages.’
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[Source: NSW Roads and Traffic Authority Great Western Highway Upgrade’ brochure, January 2002]
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Well, the widening is certainly carving through Blue Mountains communities and bushland. Pedestrian walkways and crossings are few and far between and the few cycle lanes are within a metre of B-doubles hurtling along at 80kph – those that stick to the speed limit. Who’d be a cyclist on the Great Western Highway now unless one had a death wish?
Destruction in progress yesterday at Boddington Hill, east of Wentworth FallsGreat Western Highway Blue Mountains
(Photo by Editor 20120201, free in public domain, click photo to enlarge)
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In September 2008, the then Federal Labor MP Bob Debus for the Macquarie electorate (covering the Blue Mountains region) committed another $450 million on the Great Western Highway to bypass the village of Mount Victoria and River Lett Hill near Lithgow.
Debus revealed the purpose of the widening on his website:
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“The bypass will halve times between Mt Victoria and Lithgow, reduce accidents by two-thirds, and improve freight transport from the Central West .
The bypass will provide a route on the western escarpment more suited to the operation of heavy vehicles than the current Victoria Pass…”
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[Source: ‘Bob Debus for Macquarie E-news #2‘, Bob Debus MP website, ^http://www.bobdebus.com/newsletter2.html (page since defunct since Debus has resigned from Federal Parliament]
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The joint Labor-Liberal policy focus on developing road freight and ignoring rail freight is short-sighted 20th Century truck thinking. But it is also meaning our regional highways are morphing into bigger and faster freight routes – trucking expressways. Local communities are having to share regional roads with huge trucks.
The trucking industry has allowed itself to become largely contract based where drivers instead of being paid for their time driving are paid on a trip rate. This means that the more trips a driver makes and the faster the delivery times, the more money the drivers earn. This work arrangement only encourages truck drivers to drive faster, often too fast, with disastrous consequences.
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‘It is a statistic that will alarm police and governments dealing with a string of fatal road accidents: almost two thirds of long haul truck drivers interviewed for a national study say their employers pressure them into using unsafe work practices.’
[Source: ‘Truckies pushed into danger zone’, by Andrew West, Sydney Morning Herald, 20100109, p.2]
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Recent fatalities on NSW roads , including the death of an 11-year-old boy, have sparked a renewed call for action on trucks in the Mountains.
Deputy Mayor Mark Greenhill moved a matter of urgency at Blue Mountains City Council (BMCC) meeting 31st January 2012, calling on state and federal government representatives to meet with BMCC to discuss “means and methods by which large trucks can be limited or controlled in terms of behaviour on the Great Western Highway over the Blue Mountains” following several shocking incidents in other areas of the state.
Clr Greenhill: “While the courts have not yet had a chance to determine guilt or otherwise, and I don’t seek to either, recent accidents on NSW roads stand testimony to the awesome power of these trucks,” he said. “In the Campbelltown area a large truck went over the top of a car and killed three people. They had no chance. In coastal NSW a boy was killed while sleeping in his house when a large truck ploughed through it.”
Eleven-year-old boy killed when a B-double crashes through his bedroomAnyone living within 100 metres of a highway has got cause for concern
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Penrith residents are mourning the death of Max MacGregor, the 11-year-old killed when a truck loaded with bananas crashed through his bedroom on the state’s mid-north coast. Max was asleep in the holiday home his family were renting in Urunga when, at 5am on Sunday, a B-double semi collided head-on with a ute before swerving into the holiday home (100 metres from the highway).
Clr Greenhill: “When things go wrong and [trucks] are out of control, they are an uncompromising and deadly weapon. “In that context, people have been killed in significant numbers in the Blue Mountains. It is a scandal to me that governments are not doing more to control tucks on the highway across the Mountains. “This should especially be the case while the highway works are under way.”
Clr Greenhill released BMCC figures in September last year that showed trucks were over-represented in local crash statistics and motorists were three times more likely to die in a collision with one. The statistics showed that from 2005 to 2009, trucks represented nearly a third of all vehicles involving deaths despite being less than a third of vehicles on local roads. Three per cent of all truck crashes were fatal, compared to one per cent of crashes by all other vehicles, the figures showed.
Clr Greenhill said he had reports from local residents about large trucks “even braving the Old Bathurst Road bends”, and said he would like to see vehicles such as B-doubles off local roads for the time being.’
[Source: Letter to the Editor, Blue Mountains Gazette, 20120201, p4]
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The tragic accident involving a 25/26m B-double truck at Menangle last week reaffirms the fact that the Great Western Highway, even after the upgrade to Katoomba is completed, will never be suitable for these massive trucks.
Yet the federal government is funding stage one of a multi-billion dollar highway bypass between Mt Victoria and Lithgow, the main purpose being to allow 25/26/30m B-double trucks carrying up to 77 tonnes to use the highway through the Blue Mountains. Despite overwhelming community disapproval the federal government is pushing ahead with stage one, a purpose built 25/26/30m B-double bypass at River Lett Hill.
The Blackheath Highway Action Group along with many other Blue Mountains Groups successfully lobbied for an independent review to be conducted on the proposed Mount Victoria to Lithgow highway bypass and the future of the highway west of Katoomba. In July 2011 the NSW government appointed Evans and Peck, a firm with local knowledge to conduct this review. the review was completed in November so why is the federal government stalling on its public release?
The federal government refuses to fund a $5 million rail study, a key recommendation of the Central West Transport Needs Study. Rail deserves the same funding, tax incentives and regulatory framework as is currently given to support long haul trucking.
For the sake of safety, local amenity and the long term sustainability it’s time to give rail a fair go and permanently abandon plans to spend billions to turn our highway inot a 25/26/30m B-double freight corridor.’
~ Michael Paag, Chairman, Blackheath Highway Action Group, Blue Mountains
‘A driver has died after a truck caught fire and exploded following a head-on collision between the tabletop truck and B-double took place about 24 kilometres south of Dubbo at Mountain Creek Road about 4am, emergency services said. The Newell Highway in Dubbo is closed in both directions between Mitchell Highway and Tomingley Road. The tabletop truck was carrying food and plastic food containers, and the B-double was carrying fertiliser, Ms O’Connor said.’
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‘Orange truck rollover’
Truck Roll Over at the intersection of Burrendong Way & The Northern Distributor Orange, Central NSW, 20100629
[Source: ‘Orange truck rollover’ by Steve Smith, Rural Fire Service, Canobolas, ^http://www.canobolas.rfs.nsw.gov.au/dsp_content.cfm?cat_id=131107]
‘One woman was killed and five people were injured in two accidents involving B-double trucks. Engineers were called to the scene of a dramatic accident on the Gateway Motorway at Boondall in Brisbane about midday yesterday, when a B-double truck exploded after it and a car collided. The intensity of the explosion and subsequent fire was so severe that parts of the truck fused together, raising concerns about damage to the road and overpass bridge underneath, a police spokeswoman said.
(Meanwhile) on the Bruce Highway near Rockhampton, a 19-year-old woman died and four people were injured when a car and a B-double truck collided. Police said the station wagon tried to turn into the southbound lanes of the Bruce Highway at Marmor just before 8pm on Friday when the car and truck, which was travelling in the northbound lane, collided.
The 19-year-old driver was killed, while her three female passengers, two aged 19 and one aged 18, were taken to Rockhampton hospital. The three are in a stable condition.The 65-year-old driver of the B-double was taken to hospital for precautionary treatment and has been released.
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‘Three trucks involved in two separate highway collisions’
A 50-year old man was taken to Dubbo Base Hospital with serious injuries after a collision between a B-double truck and a utility vehicle, occurred about 1.15pm on the Newell Highway just south of Gilgandra.
Earlier in the day, in a separate accident, two trucks collided 25 km outside of Dubbo on the Golden Highway. A UD truck crashed into the back of a Mitsubishi Canter turning right at the Barbigal Road turn off to Wongarbon about 11.40am yesterday.
At the scene, Ballimore RFS deputy captain Col Buckler said the Golden Highway was not currently built for trucks and “most definitively” needed upgrading.
“This is the official B-double road to Newcastle (and) the roads need to be built to carry trucks,” Mr Buckler said. “It’s time they spent money to make it safer because of the amount of trucks that use it.”
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‘Fatal crash between car and truck causes explosion, closes Pacific Highway’
AT least one person has been killed in the fiery collision between a car and a B-double truck at Warrell Creek, about 10km south of Macksville, just before 4am today.
“The B-doubles can’t pass using the diversion as the rail overpass is not suitable for their weight,” a spokesman for the Roads and Traffic Authority told AAP.
The truck involved in the crash was carrying chemicals and exploded in flames on impact, but Fire and Rescue NSW extinguished the blaze. One person from the car has been confirmed dead, but police say it’s not clear how many people were in the car when it crashed.
‘A Canberra man was lucky to escape without serious injury after the B-Double truck he was driving along the Boorowa Rd overturned at 6.15am on Wednesday morning. The 42 year old man lost control of the vehicle 2km south out of town and ran off the road, before the entire truck overturned and spilled out over both lanes of the road.
The overturned truck was carrying furniture and concrete slabs and left more than a dozen slabs scattered over the road. Local resident Russell Denning said he heard a ‘monstrous bang’ when the truck crashed on the road near his home.
Senior Constable John Newton said a lack of attention from the driver appears to be the cause of the accident but police are still investigating.
“At this stage it appears the driver was distracted but there are still final enquiries to be completed,” he said. “My understanding is the driver will receive an infringement for negligent driving.”
An out of control petrol tanker semi-trailer speeding 80kph down Mona Vale Road rolls and explodes, burning two motorists to death.
Safety First
Residents of the roadside community of Woodford in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney protest over losing their pedestrian crossing so that trucks can cruise nudging 90kph through their village. [Photo by Jodi McConaghy, 20130608]
The Mona Vale Road trucking experience
Coming to a roadside community near you.
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A toxic mix of 18,000 litres of petrol and fire retardant polluting surrounding waterways.
Without trucks Australia may stop, but with the current trucking mentality people are dying, like the two men burnt to death in the above car.
(Source: ABC News)
With Trucks Australia Stops
