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.”
The Great Western Highway across the Blue Mountains continues to be transformed from a regional highway through town and villages into an ugly concrete 4-laned trucking expressway.
Everything in the path of the road legions is being destroyed. Forests, hillsides, communities all are cast aside for more, bigger and faster trucks.
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The moral relativism of killing
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It is along these faster wider sections of the expressway, like the M4 that the road collisions and deaths are manifesting. Speed kills, but the RTA-come-RMS adopts the gun lobby attitude that it is not speed that kills but the people behind the wheels that kill.
The trucks keep speeding and the RTA-come-RMS keeps building larger and faster highways to encourage them.
[Source: locals protest against speeding trucks at Urunga on the New South Wales north coast, ‘
RMS hears rally message’ (but ignores it as usual), by Ute Schulenberg, 20120216, Coffs Harbour Advocate,
^http://www.coffscoastadvocate.com.au/news/rms-hears-rally-message/1274282/]
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Great Western Highway increasingly one of Australia’s riskiest roads
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<< Four people were killed in four separate local highway smashes over just 44 days earlier this year (2010) — three of those smashes involved trucks. Stark proof of why our Great Western Highway has been rated among Australia’s riskiest roads.
The Australian Roads Assessment Programme – AusRAP – gave the GWH only two stars out of five for safety in 2007, using data from 2000-2004. A poor result after so many millions had been poured into its improvement. AusRAP is an initiative of the Australian Automobile Association, the state motoring associations’ peak body. It says the degree of risk, or just how safe a road is, depends to an extent on whether safety has been built-in to it with elements such as wide lanes and shoulders and safety barriers, which are known to have an impact on the likelihood of a crash and its severity.
Perhaps the GWH will score better than two stars out of five next time – if AusRAP ever gets the money to re-rate it.
As any road safety expert will tell you, getting the toll down depends on three essential goals: safer roads, safer vehicles and safer drivers.
It’s for accident investigators and the Coroner to apportion blame in those four recent GWH smashes; however, we can use them as a warning about what needs to be done to reduce deaths and injuries on the GWH.
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Safer Roads?
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The GWH scores so poorly on AusRAP’s safety scale for three key deficiencies:
Not surprising then that three of those four recent smashes were head-on collisions where one vehicle crossed onto the wrong side of the road into the path of an oncoming vehicle. The fourth involved a truck doing the same thing, but fortunately no oncoming vehicle was in its path and the truck ended up embedded in a residental property.
Two of those smashes occurred on an improved section of the highway where there was no barrier between carriageways.
About 14,000 vehicles a day travel on the Blue Mountains section of the GWH. Heavy vehicles make up about 15 per cent of this traffic with more than half the road freight transport between the central west and Sydney using the highway.
The upgrade of the GWH in the Blue Mountains involves widening it to four lanes between Emu Plains and Katoomba and to mostly three lanes between Katoomba and Mount Victoria at a cost of many hundreds of millions.
There’s a limit to how fast it can be done, but it’s sad to reflect on how many innocent lives may be lost over the next decade simply due to the absence of a crash barrier between carriageways.
Narrow highway shoulders making breakdowns a death trap
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Safer Vehicles?
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Each year in Australia around 200 people are killed in ‘under-run’ crashes. Most of the victims are the occupants of the cars involved.
Front Under-run Protection Systems [FUPS] can reduce this carnage, as the NRMA emphasised in its recent report on The Safety Needs of Heavy Vehicles in Australia. [Ed: see details below at end]
These systems prevent a car from becoming trapped under the front of a truck in the event of a collision between the two, thereby ensuring the car’s safety features such as seatbelts, airbags and crumple zones remain fully effective. Some trucks already have FUPS.
FUPS must now be fitted to all new models of heavy vehicles (over 12 tonnes) from January 2011 and to all existing models from January 2012.
The NRMA report also called for side and rear under-run barriers on trucks. “Rigid trucks are particulartly dangerous in regard to rear under-run,” it said, “as there is generally a long overhang on the tray, which leads to a substantial under-run distance for impacting cars with consequent serious injuries for occupants, including decapitation.”
It also called for stability control on prime-movers and trailers, improved brakes, tamper-proof electronic on-board monitors, Advanced Emergency Braking Systems and a timeline for their implementation.
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The predicted result: more and bigger trucks on the road with an increasing trend towards articulated vehicles with multiple trailers.
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“The manual log-book system for monitoring driving hours and driver behaviour has long since lost any vestige of credibility,” the NRMA reported. “Widespread abuse of the system and difficulties in enforcing requirements, along with high levels of fatigue related crashes mean that urgent action must be taken.”
Australia’s freight task in 2020 is expected to be double that of 2006, according to research cited by the NRMA, and by 2050 to be triple its current size. “Given that the rail system cannot cater, or is unsuitable, for accommodating this increase,” the NRMA says, “it is the road system that will bear the brunt.” [Ed: The NRMA derives its revenue from road users, so it is inherently biased towards advocating for more roads and opposed to freight rail, and wil not even consider rail, because it has no potential revenue to gain].
The predicted result is more and bigger trucks on the road with an increasing trend towards articulated vehicles with multiple trailers. >>
<< Bobbin South Coast operations manager Brendon Bobbin is behind bars and the fleet of 30 trucks and 50 trailers under investigation after a Police raid swept the highways to target alleged drug use, fatigue and speed compliance yesterday (Thursday).
Mr Bobbin, 41, has been under investigation about the alleged use and supply of prohibited drugs during the operation of heavy vehicles as part of Operation Felled, formed to investigate the 40-year-old family company’s operations and compliance with road transport legislation.
The operation hit the ground in force today targeting speed tampering, fatigue offences and vehicle compliance, including workbook and system breaches, and involved Engine Control Modules (ECM) downloads and drug and alcohol testing.
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“All heavy vehicles should have tamper-proof on board monitoring to ensure drivers comply with the law and electronic stability control to help protect motorists from truck mass and momentum.”
~ NRMA, July 2007.
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Mr Bobbin was arrested at South Pambula at 7.55am with Police allegedly seizing an amount of prohibited drugs and drug paraphernalia in a vehicle and prohibited drugs inside the premise.
Brendon Bobbin is led away after being arrested at South Coast Bobbins depot on Thursday.
With him are Eden police officers Constable Andrew Kuzmins and Sergeant Scott Blanch (right).
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He was charged at Eden Police Station with supplying a commercial quantity of prohibited drugs, supply prohibited drugs (two counts) and possess prohibited drugs (two counts) and later appeared at Batemans Bay Local Court.
Mr Bobbin will next appear in court via video link on August 26. Bobbins South Coast Transport’s faces penalties in excess of $43,000 as Police investigate speed and fatigue management.
Police seized company computer records and documents from the South Pambula site and a company depot in Ingleburn this morning.
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Fleet drivers were also targeted across the state with Police intercepting trucks for vehicle and driver checks on major highways across Sydney. Five drivers will appear in court facing fatigue related offences and a further two were dealt infringement notices of $2092 for speed tampering and compliance issues.
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Sixteen defect notices were issued by RMS for a range of minor and major defects including brakes, tyres, oil and fuel issues, and suspension, body/chassis, and tow couplings.
A further 10 infringements have been issued for other defects, fatigue, and ECM offences.
Police Superintendent Stuart Smith, Traffic and Highway Patrol Command, said today’s operation is only the start for truckies and operators who are not compliant with legislation.
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Police Superintendent Stuart Smith:
“This operation is part of our ongoing commitment to stamping out rogue operators on our major highways and roads,” he said. “There is no place in the trucking industry for alleged speed and fatigue enhancing, by tampering with equipment or taking illegal drugs.
Fatigued drivers or those under the influence behind the wheel of a heavy vehicle put motorists at serious risk on our roads. Every year for the last three years, there have been in excess of 80 fatalities on our roads involving heavy vehicles. Our message is clear to operators and drivers, clean up your act before we do it for you.”
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RMS General Manager of Compliance Operation, Mr Paul Endycott, said today’s operation by the Joint Heavy Vehicle Taskforce highlights the important work this group carry out to keep roads safe for all motorists.
“The fatigue issues and speed limiter tampering identified is deeply concerning and shows there is still work to be done to ensure the majority of honest, hard working truck drivers and operators are not unfairly associated with such dangerous and illegal behaviour,” Mr Endycott said. >>
Police ‘Operation Felled’ – the official police version…
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<< NSW Police and Roads and Maritime Service (RMS) officers have executed search warrants and intercepted a company’s fleet of heavy vehicles as part of an investigation into alleged speed tampering and compliance.
Operation Felled was formed by Traffic and Highway Patrol and Far South Coast LAC, to investigate one company’s daily operations and compliance with road transport legislation.
The operation which is ongoing targeted speed tampering, fatigue offences and vehicle compliance, including workbook and system breaches, and involved engine control modules (ECM) downloads and drug and alcohol testing.
About 7.55am today, a 41-year-old Greigs Flat man was arrested at a South Pambula address. He has been charged with supplying a commercial quantity of prohibited drugs, supply prohibited drugs (x2) and possess prohibited drugs (x2). He was refused bail to appear in Batemans Bay Local Court today (Thursday 22 August 2013).
The man’s arrest relates to inquiries into the alleged use and supply of prohibited drugs during the operation of heavy vehicles.
About 8am today (Thursday 22 August 2013), police executed warrants at Pambula on the South Coast and Greigs Flat, as well as a company depot in Ingleburn. Officers also intercepted fleet trucks in transit on major highways across Sydney, checking compliance and drug and alcohol testing drivers.
At the Greigs Flat address, officers allegedly located an amount of prohibited drugs and drug paraphernalia in a vehicle and prohibited drugs inside the premise. These were seized by police.
During the warrants, investigators seized company computer records and documents allegedly relating to speed and fatigue management and responsibilities.
Two trucks were identified for speed tampering and compliance issues, resulting in two drivers receiving infringements for $2092. The RMS will now investigate these matters further in terms of the company’s compliance with speed requirements.
A company convicted of speed tampering faces penalties in excess of $16,000, while directors can also be held responsible. Company’s convicted of breaches of fatigue requirements can face penalties in excess of $27,000.
So far during the operation, 16 defects have been issued by RMS for a range of minor and major defects inclusive of brakes, tyres, oil and fuel issues, and suspension, body/chassis, and tow couplings.
Police and RMS have inspected 18 trucks in NSW, five were identified interstate, which resulted in five court attendance notices issued to drivers for fatigue-related offences. A further 10 infringements have been issued for other defects, fatigue, and ECM offences.
Superintendent Stuart Smith, Traffic and Highway Patrol Command, said today’s operation is only the start for truckies and operators who are not compliant with our legislation.
“This operation is part of our ongoing commitment to stamping out rogue operators on our major highways and roads.
“There is no place in the trucking industry for alleged speed and fatigue enhancing, by tampering with equipment or taking illegal drugs. Fatigued drivers or those under the influence behind the wheel of a heavy vehicle put motorists at serious risk on our roads.
“Every year for the last three years, there have been in excess of 80 fatalities on our roads involving heavy vehicles.
“Our message is clear to operators and drivers, clean up your act before we do it for you,” Superintendent Smith said.
RMS General Manager of Compliance Operation, Mr Paul Endycott, said today’s operation by the Joint Heavy Vehicle Taskforce highlights the important work this group carry out to keep our roads safe for all motorists.
“The fatigue issues and speed limiter tampering identified is deeply concerning and shows there is still work to be done to ensure the majority of honest, hard working truck drivers and operators are not unfairly associated with such dangerous and illegal behaviour,” Mr Endycott said.
Coles Freshness policy blamed for deliver truck speeding regime
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<< Transport Workers Union deputy secretary Michael Aird has called on Coles to take responsibility for rogue operators in its supply chain after police arrested one of its drivers on the NSW South Coast this week.
Thursday’s arrest (Bobbins Transport) was part of an operation targeting the alleged use and supply of prohibited drugs during the operation of heavy vehicles.
During the warrants, investigators also seized company computer records and documents allegedly relating to speed and fatigue management and responsibilities.
Mr Aird says the problem is a systemic one and people really need to understand that it is part of a bigger picture.
“When a giant retailer like Coles pushes down rates, drivers end up being forced into dangerous practices that will kill people on our roads,” Mr Aird said.
Fresh to you thanks to No Doze
“Desperate companies unfortunately resort to outrageous and illegal practices just to stay in business because of the enormous pressures imposed on them by Coles.
“People need to understand that one of the real costs of Coles driving prices down to increase profits is putting dangerously unsafe trucking companies onto our public roads.”
Mr Aird said truck drivers being forced to work under enormous pressure from unrealistic deadlines imposed by large retail giants contributed to the more than 300 deaths on Australian roads each year.
“This is why the TWU continues to campaign for Safe Rates for our members and for all Australians using our roads: which mean fair pay for truck drivers and safe roads for drivers.
“The Coles business model is driving companies into unsafe practices and costing innocent people their lives,” Mr Aird said.
The trucking company, Bobbins, is in the Coles supply chain and contracting for Coles. It has previously been involved in serious accidents and had been found to be tampering with speed limiters. >> .
2012: Cowboy Truckers discovered yet Duncan Gay makes no systemic overhaul
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<< Calls have grown for an overhaul of the trucking industry after the discovery of systemic safety breaches by (Lennons) transport company linked to a triple road fatality in Sydney.
The NSW government announced it would spring spot checks on heavy vehicles but says it will await the outcome of a police investigation into Lennons Transport Services before taking further action.
Police descended on the company early yesterday after one of their drivers was charged over the January 24 accident on the Hume Highway in Menangle.
They later said they had found safety breaches, including attempts to manipulate speed limiters, on eight Lennons trucks.
Operation Marshall was formed after Calvyn Logan, 59, and his elderly parents Donald and Patricia Logan, aged in their 80s, died on January 24 when a B-double truck careered onto the wrong side of the road.
On Tuesday police charged Vincent George, 33, with three counts of dangerous driving occasioning death.
He will appear in Campbelltown Local Court on May 16.
Yesterday, officers converged on the company’s headquarters at Enfield, in Sydney’s inner-west, and alerted authorities across NSW, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia.
They allegedly located 19 of 35 vehicles and found speed limiters on seven of the trucks had been altered so they could travel beyond the maximum 100km/h speed limit.
An eighth vehicle had its fuel system altered to deliver more fuel to the engine in order to achieve higher speeds, police said.
One driver was found with cannabis in his possession and another had exceeded fatigue restrictions by driving 17 hours in one day.
Police located another Lennons truck abandoned on a roadside in Victoria and the driver’s logbook in a nearby rubbish bin.
Traffic and Highway Patrol Commander John Hartley said police also located doctored logbooks and many devices used to manipulate speed limits at Lennons offices.
RMS regulatory services director, Peter Wells, said tampering with trucks to exceed maximum speeds was well known in the industry.
“There is a practice in the industry of modifying speed limiters,” Mr Wells told reporters in Sydney.
He would not comment on whether the RMS had been investigating Lennons before the crash but expected charges to be laid.
But the RMS did confirm that Lennons was slapped with a court supervisory intervention order in 2008 as a “systematic or persistent offender” of road laws.
NSW Opposition Leader John Robertson yesterday called on the state government to investigate the industry.
But when asked if a widespread review of the industry was needed, Premier Barry O’Farrell said “anything in that sense will be informed by what is discovered in this instance”.
NSW Roads Minister Duncan Gay said trucks would be subject to random checks to stop “cowboy” operators from illegally tampering with them.
“I certainly would describe it as a blitz, and it’s not the end,” Mr Gay said yesterday.
TWU National Secretary Tony Sheldon blamed retailers like Coles and Woolworths for putting “crazy” deadlines on drivers.
“The people that have been driving (with) these unsafe practices, and trucks being interfered with, has been as a result of the economic pressure from Coles and the other major retailers.”
Lennons has been a member of TruckSafe since 1999, a voluntary regulatory scheme administered by the Australian Trucking Association (ATA), which gives transport companies federal fuel tax credits. Auditors contact members in advance of an inspection but only inspect maintenance records. They were last inspected in June 2010 and no breaches were found.
<< Modular B-triple truck configurations will now be allowed on the Newell Highway from Narrabri to Goondiwindi in NSW.
As part of national heavy vehicle reforms, modular B-triples are allowed to operate on the road train network west of the Newell under the same conditions as Type 1 road trains.
Transport operators travelling from far western NSW, e.g. on the Kamilaroi Highway, will now be able to access the Newell at Narrabri to use the 225 kilometre stretch of highway to Goondiwindi, and then beyond.
Even though they have an extra (third) trailer, modular B-triples are typically shorter than Type 1 road trains currently operating on this section of the Newell.
Modern modular B-triples are said to be safer than some of the older and heavier vehicle combinations using these routes, especially in terms of their manoeuvrability and handling performance. Being articulated they follow the road better.
Industry research has shown that a semi-trailer operating at a higher mass limit (HML) takes approximately 37 trips to transport 1,000 tonnes of freight, whereas for the same tonnage a modular B-triple operating at HML only requires about 17 trips.
The stretch of the Newell Highway between Narrabri and Goondiwindi has been determined as having suitable infrastructure to accommodate these types of trucks.
Type 1 Road Train Max length = 36.5 metres
Modular B-triple Max length = 35.0 metres
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The roads west of the Newell, on which Type 1 road trains and modular B-triples currently operate, have significantly lower traffic volumes than the Newell itself.
For this reason, and to ensure consistency with the existing approach taken for routes on and east of the highway, modular B-triples using the Newell itself will be required to meet additional requirements including:
Accreditation under the maintenance module of National Heavy Vehicle Accreditation Scheme (NHVAS);
Road-friendly suspension; and
Enrolment in the Intelligent Access Program (IAP)
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Consistent with requirements already in place for road trains and modular B-triples in this part of NSW, vehicles will need to comply with a maximum speed limit of 90 km/h.
In April this year, the NSW Government and Transport Certification Australia (TCA) announced a new entry options initiative and flexible pricing framework to help reduce the costs of transport operators implementing and using IAP.
The entry options arrangement recognises transport operators have existing in-vehicle GPS units and makes it easier for transport operators to have their existing in-vehicle units assessed and type-approved to comply with national IAP standards.
Modular B-triples are expected to start using the Newell Highway between Narrabri and Goondiwindi from late August, subject to permit approval.
Operators interested in applying for permits should contact iap@rms.nsw.gov.au.
Another heavy linehaul truck crashes on another wide, fast, multi-laned highway
Truck drivers paid on a trip rate, not the safer hourly rate.
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Hume Highway at Marulan July 2013:
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<< A man has died in a crash involving a truck and several cars on the Hume Highway, about 15km south of Marulan.
A NSW Police spokeswoman:
“The male driver of the semi-trailer was ejected from his vehicle and died at the scene. Emergency services responded to reports of a collision between a semi-trailer, a smaller truck and two cars in the southbound lanes of the Hume Highway” at 6.25pm (last night). The drivers of the other vehicles and their passengers were assessed by paramedics on site before being taken to Goulburn Base Hospital for further treatment.”
One southbound lane of the highway remained closed on Tuesday morning as traffic was directed around the crash site. >>
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Hume Highway at Kyeamba Gap (same night):
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<< Meanwhile, northbound lanes remain closed on the Hume Highway at Kyeamba Gap between Tumbarumba Road and Little Billabong Road following a truck accident there early this morning. >>
<< About 12.45am (Tuesday March 27, 2012) a B-double semi-trailer was travelling north laden with furniture , about 5km south of Marulan overnight.
The semi rolled onto its side spilling its load onto the highway, blocking all northbound lanes. A semi-trailer travelling behind the B-double truck crashed into the rear of the B-Double.
The driver of the B-double was taken to Goulburn Base Hospital suffering a possible fractured rib, while the driver of the second truck was not hurt. A salvage operation is underway following a double truck crash on the Hume Highway.
Australian Native Landscapes linehaul semi jack-knifes One of many speeding over the B,ue Mountains
Truck drivers paid on a trip rate, not the safer hourly rate.
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<< Jack knifed … a truck accident shut the Great Western Highway at Mount Victoria this morning. The highway was shut for over an hour after a truck jack knifed blocking both lanes of the highway. A heavy tow truck was brought in to remove the truck. The road reopened around midday.
Australia Post (government-owned) StarTrack Express B-Double truck crashes off the Hume HighwayThe overnight linehaul truck driver fell asleep on cruise control
Truck drivers paid on a trip rate, not the safer hourly rate.
[Photo: CHRIS GORDON]
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<<The 47-year-old driver of this rig died when it ran off the Hume Highway near Marulan in the early hours of July 29. A report is being prepared for the coroner.
ROAD CLOSURE: The scene of Wednesday morning’s accident 500 metres south of Goulburn’s northern exit at 6am when for unknown reasons a B-double left the road. The driver suffered minor injuries.
With another two serious truck accidents on the Hume Highway near Goulburn in the past two weeks – one of them fatal – the Goulburn Post examines whether cruise control is a possible factor. LEIGH BOTTRELL reports.
IS cruise control on long-distance trucks – often allied with automatic transmission – contributing to serious accidents on our main highways?
This question increasingly is being raised as big semis and B-doubles proliferate and speed limits are increased on some major NSW country roads. Or, is boredom leading to drowsiness, brought on by modern “easy driving” truck technology and improved highways, the real culprit?
The jury is still out on this, while there is not yet definitive accident survey evidence pointing to cruise control’s role in accidents. But anecdotal evidence and practical knowledge of people long-associated with big rigs and their drivers suggests cruise-auto can be a mixed blessing.
Bert Cool has seen the aftermath of more truck accidents than probably anyone else in his 30 years with Royans, the Wagga Wagga-headquartered heavy vehicle recovery and repair group.
Now operating Australia-wide, Royans over the years have been called on to haul thousands of trucks back onto the road from every imaginable predicament. Too often, the smashed or burnt cabs tell the story of lives lost and families shattered.
And Bert Cool has no doubt that drivers falling asleep while their long-haul rigs are running on cruise control is a contributing factor to a growing number of highway accidents.
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Bert Cool:
“Definitely. It happens more often now. A driver can nod off and the truck just keeps going, because he doesn’t have his foot on the accelerator. Before he wakes up, they’re in the scrub, or they hit something.
Before cruise control, if a driver dropped off at the wheel his foot nearly always fell away from the accelerator and the truck slowed down. He usually was woken up before they got into real trouble.”
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However, Sergeant Rod Cranston, of Goulburn police highway patrol, doubts that cruise control by itself is a contributing factor to truck accidents.
[Ed (ex-trucker): Overnight driving is inherently dangerous, and with trucks the risk is exacerbated. Linehaul (long-distance) freight should travel by rail for reasons of safety away from ordinary road users and economy of scale. Local distribution freight should travel BY DAY on the roads until governments can adequately safeguard local communities from the unacceptable risks and consequences of heavy-vehicle driver fatigue.
Linehaul rail freight is inherently safer that linehaul road freight when professional management is on par. Linehaul rail freight is cheaper per unit of freight over a large volume. This will be moreso as the price of imported diesel structurally increases.
For hundreds of linehaul trucks driven by hundreds of drivers to do the job of one linehaul train say Sydney to Darwin is uneconomic. The door delivery component either end requires logistical design and efficiency (pulling bureaucratic fingers out).
Immorally, trucking companies exploit truck drivers by denying them employee status and benefits, selfishly to shift decent driver wages and benefits to employer profit.
Yet both Federal and State governments across Australia are stuck in a 20th Century truck-centric mindset when it comes to freight logistics strategic planning, disregarding the environment ruined in the process of building bigger, more and wider highways, disregarding the permanent negative impacts upon local communities, and driving truck drivers to early graves. It is all very selfish and ^Robber Baron in thinking. The main beneficiaries are the trucking barons.]
Linehaul has a smarter way: Intermodal Rail/Road Logistics
. Bucharest International Rail Freight Terminal (BIRFT)
A semi-trailer from the first scheduled train with intermodal wagons to arrive from Germany and Austria at BIRFT is transferred to a road vehicle by ‘Big George’ on 29 October. The terminal is operated by Tibbett Logistics, part of the UK-based Keswick Enterprises Group
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<< Romanian-based ^Tibbett Logistics, the operator of South-Eastern Romania’s prime intermodal rail terminal, has this week received the first scheduled train with intermodal wagons from Germany and Austria. The new service will initially comprise two trains a week in each direction.
The first train arrived early on the morning of 29th October 2012 with 38 units – eight semi-trailers and 30 45’ pallet-wide continental containers, destined for import customers in the south east of Romania, primarily Bucharest and Ploiesti.
Tibbett Logistics has recently renamed the terminal as the Bucharest International Rail Freight Terminal, or BIRFT, because it has become clear to the company – which is part of the UK-based Keswick Enterprises Group – that a large proportion of the marketplace in Eastern Europe remains unaware that the services offered at the terminal go well beyond simple domestic road-rail transportation.
The open-access terminal is used to transfer shipping containers arriving on rail wagons to road trailers, and vice versa. BIRFT is the only such facility in Romania operating regular scheduled block trains between Constanta Port and Bucharest, on both import and export movements. Customers include the major shipping lines and freight forwarders, as well as direct users.
In addition, it is the only intermodal rail terminal offering CFS (Container Freight Station) and warehousing services within the terminal itself, linked directly to the rail tracks. The terminal accommodates domestic and international conventional rail wagon traffic, and Tibbett Logistics combines these activities with conventional road transport whenever the latter is more efficient than collecting or delivering containers using its own rail wagons.
Completing the services offered at the terminal are stripping/stuffing containers, customs clearance and transit operations, along with container management, repair and storage.
Tibbett Logistics CEO, David Goldsborough, commented: “We believe that – via the Port of Constanta – Romania is the natural entry point to Europe from the East and elsewhere. Our aim is to facilitate the efficient transportation of goods from the Port to end-destinations throughout Europe, as well as from EU states back to Romania.
“Since the inception of our regular block trains between Constanta and Bucharest we have had many discussions with users and potential users regarding other rail-related services – including the handling of conventional wagons, where we already have an excellent infrastructure in place. We have developed additional services so that we can customise the mix of rail-based and road-based transportation in either containers or conventional trucks – depending on the exact needs of the customer. Given the increasing cost of diesel, this is being very well received by both existing clients and those coming to the service for the first time.”
Tibbett Logistics is Romania’s largest privately owned contract logistics specialist. In addition to intermodal activities, it offers comprehensive supply chain management services to the automotive, textiles, retail and other FMCG sectors throughout Romania and across South East Europe. It operates approximately 70,000 square metres of warehousing, plus a distribution fleet comprising tilt trailers, double- and triple-chamber reefers and container chassis – along with its own intermodal rail wagons. >>
The New South Wales Government’s dictatorial roads department, the RTA-come-RMS, has again kowtowed to the trucking lobby by deciding in its infantile wisdom to remove centre double lines from the Hawkesbury Road through the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, so that big sand trucks with trailers (basically ‘B-Doubles‘) can hog both sides of the highway.
Looka Me Looka Me Looka Me!
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The idiots in the fancy new RTA-come-RMA headquarters in Parramatta want no restrictions on truck-length, no speed restrictions for these trucks along Hawkesbury Road – the bigger trucks the better, God Damn!
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Strategy to avoid a B-Double
An Outback vernacular joke, not so funny…
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Outback Crash Often the End of Everyone’s Story!
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It’s a Northern Territory Outback Approach – unlimited speed and road trains – despite Hawkesbury Road winding tightly down the mountain at Hawkesbury Heights and passing through residential areas between Springwood and Richmond.
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Winmalee ain’t trucking Tennant Creek!
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According to Hawkesbury Road residents typically 90 tipper trucks with dog trailers (basically B-Doubles) hoon along the road daily.
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In late 2012, the RTA-come-RMS removed the centre line marking on four hairpin bends at Hawkesbury Heights so that bigger trucks can cross the center of the road without crossing over centre double lines because the double lines have been painted over.
No centre lines, no road centre, see, just like Mount Panorama! No speed cameras, no police patrols, speeding cowboy truckers out of control. Car, motorbike and pedestrian traffic are just collateral damage.
Bugger!
Truck rollover along Mill Road at Kurrajong in the Blue MountainsCowboy Trucker going too fast – nuh.
[Source: Photo by Top Notch Video, in article ‘Lucky Easter accident escape’, 20120412, by Cerise Burgess, journalist, Hawkesbury Gazette, ^http://www.hawkesburygazette.com.au/story/273890/lucky-easter-accident-escape/]
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The local Blue Mountains Council has rightly branded the RTA-come-RMS decision to remove these double centre lines as “absolutely insane”‘, “ridiculous” and “plain criminal” at its councillor meeting on 23rd April 23 2013. Councillor Brendan Christie stated, “I just think it is completely ridiculous that six bureaucrats from the RMS sat down for a nice lunch and this is all they could come up with.”
Blue Mountains Council’s delegated Local Traffic Committee: Minutes of Meeting 20130326
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Two years ago in 2011, the Blue Mountains Council reported on a Road Safety Action Plan. The report identified that:
<<the Blue Mountains has almost triple the amount of speed related crashes than the Sydney Region. Our rate of 33.73% is almost double that of the rate of NSW. This makes reducing speeding on our roads a clear road safety priority for the Blue Mountains community.>>
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The report also identified trucks as a key issue:
<<The Blue Mountains has a significantly higher proportion of trucks involved in crashes than the Sydney Region, Western Sydney or NSW.
Over a five year period, light trucks constituted 9.53% of crashes in the Blue Mountains. This can be compared with 7.85% in Sydney, 8.31% in Western Sydney and 8.67% in New South Wales as a whole. The Blue Mountains also experienced significant increases in crashes involving trucks over the last five years.>>
Yet at the same time, the Blue Mountains Council is similarly embracing more trucks transiting through Blue Mountains by planning a new truck route through native bushland habitat and over the headwaters of Fitzgerald Creek and carved through critically endangered Sydney Turpentine Ironbark Forest in protected Deanii Reserve.
The Council has already spent $77,000 on a study to consider possible route options for a truck link road between Hawkesbury Road and the Great Western Highway at Valley Heights. The preferred route necessitates massively increasing the road weight limit, creating a two-lane, three-span bridge 35 metres above Fitzgerald Creek with a total the project construction cost of $26 million, all to encourage more trucks through the Blue Mountains.
Borrowing the same mealy-mouthed spin as the RTA-come-RMS, the Council’s consultants try to justify the new road would “improve traffic flow and reduce delays.” No doubt its environmental impact statement would be conjured up by darkside ecologists to pretend the road works and bridge works would cause minimal impact to endangered ecology.
The initial council study will go on public exhibition soon with a report back to council in August 2013. We shall be ready to rip the EIS apart, or will it be watered down to another Review of Environmental Effects as per usual?
Truck rollover in the Blue Mountains April, 2005RTA-come-RMS is giving tacit approval for truckers to use excessive speed and ignore common safety measures.
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The RTA-come-RMS is the handmaiden to the truck industry and has allowed Hawkesbury Highway to become a trucking cowboy corridor.
The Bells Line of Road is just a bad:
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Somewhere in the Blue Mountains there is a truck collision or rollover a week. The trucking menace is out of control and these are the bureaucrats responsible – New South Wales Premier Barry O’Farrell and his Roads Minister Duncan Gay.
Premier Barry O’Farrell (left) and Roads Minister Duncan GayHandmaidens of Trucking
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Local residents and ordinary users of the Hawkesbury Road are intimidated by these trucking cowboys speeding, hogging the road and tailgating like their on a speedway circuit.
Blackheath, Blue Mountains, already a statistical victim
Betty Dowdell of Blackheath, 16 Dec 2008, rest in peace
Your memory is not lost.
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Drivers on the bends of Hawkesbury Road have raised concerns about the serious risks of heavy vehicles crossing to the wrong side of the road as they negotiate the narrow corners. The Roads and Maritime Service removed the centre lines on the bends late last year which residents say has only increased the problem.
Trucker Wet Dreaming
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With four schools on the 10km road, driver safety is paramount both on the Winmalee stretch and also for those people driving down from the Mountains via the bends. According to local politicians, the solution would be for a proper review of the road by the RTA-come-RMS, with a view to enforcing the road rules, including a return to the centre lane markings on the bends and looking at other engineering options.
But many local residents have had enough and are demanding a complete ban trucks from driving on Hawkesbury Road which would mean it would no longer be gazetted as a State Route.
Kredies Trucking speeding down Victoria Pass, 5th December 2011
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<<A truck driver has been airlifted to hospital with suspected spinal injuries, and a major cleanup operation has been undertaken following a truck overturning on Mount Victoria Pass this afternoon (5 December 2011).
Emergency Services were called to the bottom of Mount Victoria Pass (Great Western Highway) just after 2:30pm today following reports an eastbound semi-trailer carrying scrap metal had rolled onto the concrete divider, leaving the driver trapped in the cabin.
Several Fire and Rescue NSW crews, Police Rescue, an Ambulance and a rescue helicopter responded to the scene. Rescue crews freed the driver about 4:45pm before he was airlifted to hospital suffering suspected spinal injuries.
The Great Western Highway has been closed for several hours while a clean up and salvage operation is underway with debris scattered across the roadway. The RTA has advised traffic is being diverted into the Darling Causeway with eastbound motorists being advised to use Chifley Road (Mort St) and the Darling Causeway as an alternative route.>>
Speeding Truck Overturns down Mt Victoria Pass, 3rd August 2011Two truckers dead
The pass has been there and steep for a long time – nothing new.
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<<Two men have been crushed to death inside the cabin of a truck in the Blue Mountains today. Police said the truck rolled and crashed into a barrier on the Great Western Highway, near the top of Victoria Pass, just after 10am. The two men were found dead inside the cabin. Their ages are unknown. One eastbound lane of the highway is expected to be closed for some time while police investigate.>>
Again, we didn’t have to wait long to learn about yet another dangerous trucking cowboy in New South Wales.
In Sydney’s outer north this morning, a truck side-swiped a school bus and didn’t stop.
The small school bus was travelling along Bay Road at 9 am at Berrilee, when the bus driver was forced to swerve to avoid a head-on collision with the truck over the centre lines.
In avoiding the collision, the bus driver scraped along a rockface alongside the left hand side of the narrow section of Bay Road. Four bus windows were smashed, and seven children on the bus suffered minor cuts from the smashed glass. Two of them were taken to hospital. The truck driver drove on (another hit and run) following the incident and yet police decided not to contemplate pursuing criminal charges.
Unbelievably the police are sight unseen self-excusing the trucker for ‘perhaps’ not realising the damage, because of some fabricated personal presumption that the truck was too big for the driver to notice. “We don’t think he even realised something had gone wrong” the police spokesman said.
Was this comment correctly reported by the media? If so, how does the police spokesman know? Does it take a child to die for these police to treat seriously the near fatality of children on a supposedly safe school bus?
If so, these police should state this presumption to the faces of the children’s parents and see what response they get for excusing dangerous trucking behaviour endangering the lives of their children.
If so, then these police are ignorant of what could have happened, of the likely trauma experienced by both bus driver and the children who will never forget this incident that could have ended their lives. These police seem to nonchalantly care nothing for road safety or for proactive policing.
‘She’ll be right reckless trucking‘ is unacceptable and here we record yet another trucking cowboy excused by police, until next time when an innocent road user is killed.
<<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/]
Sad Sight: Blue Mountains resident Aanya Mary devastated by the senseless slaughter of Bullaburra’s Angophora Blue Mountains, New South Wales, Australia.But to road engineers with Sydney’s RTA-come-RMS: “..it was just the easy and efficient option” ..in order that more B-Doubles get line-of-sight through Bullaburra as they nudge 90kph to keep their job
[Source: ‘Centuries-old tree makes way for highway upgrade’, 20130410, by Shane Desiatnik, Blue Mountains Gazette, p.13,
^http://www.bluemountainsgazette.com.au/story/1419083/bullaburra-tree-makes-way-for-highway-widening/] ‘You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone’
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Two generations after the 1960s grassroots protests against corporate environmental destruction and corrupted government bullying justification of ‘progress’, nothing has changed.
They took all the trees, put ‘em in a tree museum” (Joni Mitchell, 1970), yet forty years hence we’re still killing 300 year old native trees for a ‘paved paradise.’
Back in September 2008, a communiqué released by the RTA-come-RMS confirmed that this heritage listed red gum (photo) alongside the highway at Bullaburra was to be killed to widen the highway. It didn’t give a reason to the community, but in its Review of Environmental Effectsjustified the tree’s demise by requiring line of sight for more trucks so they can hurtle through Bullaburra at a new increased speed of 80kph, but nudging 90.
The implication was to not just widen the existing highway and make it safer, but to carve a trucking expressway through as though no Bullaburra community existed; just like they did to neighbouring Lawson and Wentworth Falls, and the other now divided highway towns and villages along the Great Western Highway. And the lessons from the even wider and faster M4 motorway down the hill is that the outcomes have not made the journey safer. Statistically, faster and bugger trucks have made the M4 motorway and the already widened sections of the Great Western Highway, even more dangerous.
Killing Bullaburra’s Tree was wrong like an invading army shooting surrendering locals because it is inconvenient to imprison them. To the RTA-come-RMS, decimating local amenity is but collateral damage. Any wonder propaganda pamphlets were not dropped over the village in the weeks leading up to the carnage like the US did in the Vietnam War.
Widening the highway is the wrong encouragement for an efficient NSW freight system and won’t address road safety. The widening is destroying local heritage and community values. It is politically short-sighted on all counts.
Blue Mountains Significant Tree Register – deceitful faux conservation
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Bullaburra’s Angophora was a rare symbolic remnant of the dominant Angophora Forest habitat that once flourished in the Bullaburra area and which has earned listing on council’s Register of Significant Trees.
Consultation with a local (Level 5) arborist with expertise in Angophoras, had confirmed the tree an Angophora costata and “between 200 and 300 years old and that if given the chance will survive between 400 and 600 years.” So it predated Bullaburra (1924) and predated the colonisation of Australia (1788).
Why did local Blue Mountains Council turn its back on its own heritage register and on Mountains heritage. Had traditional owners been consulted?
Blue Mountains Council’s Significant Trees were in 1988 registered under Development Control Plan 9 (DCP9): the purpose of which was to identify and protect those trees listed on the Register; promote greater public awareness of the existence of the Register, and the individual items listed; ensure existing and, importantly, prospective land owners, are made aware of the Significant Trees which may be located on their property; and ensure correct on-going care and maintenance of those trees listed, through the recommendations included with the significant tree register.
DCP 9 was formally adopted in 21 June 1988 and since then had effected no legal weight or meaning. The tens of thousands spent on the plan then and since has been a financial misappropriation.
The then Federal Member for Macquarie (Blue Mountains), Bob Debus MP, openly supported and encouraged the RTA-come-RMS in its highway widening through Blue Mountains communities.
Debus had publicly praised the RTA for “doing exemplary work in consultation with…local communities.” (Blue Mountains Gazette 20081126).
Yet this Editor, who for the past seven years has observed and participated in numerous RTA-come-RMS community consultation workshops dealing with the Trucking Expressway mission along the Great Western Highway, has found all ‘community consultation’ to be but a recurring deceitful farce designed purely for public relations and so that on paper, community consultation was legally ‘seen to be done’.
The Juggernaut Cake was baked, and the community herded and selected to choose the colour of the icing. So thanks for coming dumb peasants!
The sad thing is that we see each community hoodwinked one by one, losing rights and amenity to an expanding Sydney conurbation of our Mountains. How many minutes will widening cut through the Mountains only to be added back in Sydney congestion and the chronic truck queues at Port Botany? If widening claims to address highway safety why does the six-lane M4 have the highest accident rate in the State?
Debus has publicly been the key driver of the highway widening and increased traffic policy prepared to splurge half a billion dollars to encourage more trucks on our roads and committing a teetering NSW Government already heading into deficit. Debus’ myopic fixation with trucks has cast him as a reckless pariah against the Federal government’s promise of meeting Kyoto emission targets. He and his babyboomer age group seem locked in a truck-centric mindset, one that is anti-rail like Premier Nick Greiner’s condemning of freight rail (1988-92) and like US President Eisenhower’s industrial superhighway ruination of Northern America back in the 1950s.
[Source: ‘They took all the trees’, 20081203, letter in the Blue Mountains Gazette local newspaper, in print]
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They took all the trees, put ‘em in a tree museum..
by Canadian singer, composer and lyricist Joni Mitchell from her classic hit ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ from her album ‘Ladies of the Canyon’ released in April 1970.
Joni Mitchell’s single cover
Her original recording was this single, but then released later on her album ‘Ladies of the Canyon’ (1970)
Yet forty three years hence dear lady and what have we learnt from your sad message about the bulldozing of Nature?
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“Big Yellow Taxi” became a hit in Joni’s native Canada (#14) as well as Australia (#6) and the UK (#11).
Joni: “I wrote ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ on my first trip to Hawaii. I took a taxi to the hotel and when I woke up the next morning, I threw back the curtains and saw these beautiful green mountains in the distance. Then, I looked down and there was a parking lot as far as the eye could see, and it broke my heart… this blight on paradise. That’s when I sat down and wrote the song.”
The song is known for its environmental concern – “They paved paradise to put up a parking lot” and “Hey farmer, farmer, put away that DDT now”.
Joni Mitchell in 1970
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The song line “They took all the trees, and put ’em in a tree museum…and charged the people a dollar and a half just to see ’em” refers to Foster Botanical Garden in downtown Honolulu, which is a living museum of tropical plants, some rare and endangered.
These days, Honolulu’s Foster Botanical Garden has become home to hundreds of species of endangered Hawaiian and other exotic plants. The garden’s mission is to plan, develop, curate, maintain and study documented collections of tropical plants in an aesthetic setting for the purposes of conservation, botany, horticulture, education, and recreation. While it is very important to teach people about the natural flora of Hawaii, it is a shame that they have to be kept in such a tree museum and are not able to be appreciated in their natural settings.
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Colonising destruction of Natural Hawaii
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Bullaburra’s Angophora was that roadside tree, always there, estimated to be between up to 200 and 300 years old, but took only a few hours to chop down to a stump on April Fools Day to clear the way for highway widening work in Bullaburra.
The decision to remove the tree listed on council’s Significant Tree Register was made back in 2009. This is the coniving strategy of the RTA-come RMS employeing those with degrees in ‘Media Communications’ – this 21C black art of corporate propaganda. Move over 20th C Used Car Salesmen, Y-Gens in Media Communications are the new low-life to be avoided.
But the shock of seeing the 30-metre tall smooth-barked apple red gum being removed was too much for some local residents, who gathered beside it to take photos and quietly reflect.
Katoomba resident Aanya Mary said she was devastated by the loss of the tree and the public not being told when it was going to be removed. She called the decision to chop it “the easy and efficient option” and questioned if other solutions were thoroughly considered.
“This tree would have seen generations of Gundungurra and Darug people rest under its boughs and no doubt [the explorers] Lawson, Blaxland and Wentworth passed its gracious trunk.”
In a callous afterthought, the RTA-come-RMS has offered to use wood of the tree to create ukuleles and furniture. Can Chopin’s funeral march be played on a Ukele?
Some callous bureaucrat in the RTA-come-RMS suggested using the Angophora wood to make stupid UkelesNot even into traditional Aboriginal instruments, weapons or tools. The minds at RMS Paramatta head office are urbane and bewildered.
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Yet others, more attached to the tree and aware of the behind the scenes political deceit, have suggested making council coffins for those who signed off on the Angophora’s demise.
Blue Mountains failure to preserve Natural History
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<<The sudden and surreptitious removal of the mature heritage-listed Eucalypt at Bullaburra last week was avoidable and a total failure of our ability to preserve our natural history.
That tree was the property of the Blue Mountains community just as much as the community hall at Bullaburra.
When it can be arranged for the highway widening to bypass the community hall, there is no reason it couldn’t be diverted around another significant and far older landmark.
Not only did Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth pass close by this tree in 1813 but the following year the first road was built almost under its branches. The year after, 1815, Lachlan Macquarie and his entourage passed by this tree as the first public users of the road through the Blue Mountains. In the 1830s Charles Darwin also made the journey passed it.
Blue Mountains (..) Council has failed miserably to protect our natural history. It’s also obvious how totally toothless is the rhetoric around the Significant Tree Register.
The RTA-come-RMS suggestion to make use of the wood is an attempt to sidetrack and trivialises its destruction. Who needs a symbol of the endurance of natural beauty when you can have ukeleles and matches?
Trees like this are the Blue Mountains community’s natural history – not the RTA-come-RMS’s.
The bottom line is there is no legislation to protect our natural history, and any clowns with clout can get their way.
Why doesn’t the Blue Mountains (..) Council stand up for us and for the naturakl environment in matters like these?>>
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[Source: ‘Heritage tree’ (discretionary label by BMG editor), 20130417, by P.D. Bonney, of Faulconbridge, letter to the editor, in Blue Mountains Gazette (local newspaper), page 4, print only]
Ed: But when Government comes intimidating the homes and amenity of these passers-by? So loud the NYMBY’s plead for community support.
To reliable taxpayer-funded bureaucrats inside RTA-come-RMS, community NYMBYISM has become a strategic community vunerabilty so exploited to known consultant formalae. But so unprepared are communities like the Blue Mountains for exploitation that they are prone to and succumb to industrial rape, village by village, and cleverly silenced by the consultants.
But once the Government’s omnipotent Juggenaut invasion arrives and the overwhelming household helplessness, locals try selling up in vain and a few commit quiet, unreported suicide. It is ultimately then, that Government has come, seen and conquered its own taxpayers so that such issues shrink from mainstream media, are excluded from government statistics and so are relegated into invisiblity, the history cleansed and revised by the government consultants.
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.”
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
Sad Sight: Blue Mountains resident Aanya Mary
devastated by the senseless slaughter of Bullaburra’s Angophora
Blue Mountains, New South Wales, Australia
