The cause is unknown at this stage, but it is the consequence that is the issue, irrespective.
Hardly a day goes past without some news story about a truck crash on a Sydney road and this is compounded across Australia.
Yet in transport policy unison, governments across Australia at state and federal levels have abandoned rail freight and instead are headlong encouraging more and bigger trucks on our roads. They are encouraging larger and long trucks and spending billions to accommodate them. Road making has become governments’ panacea for solving linehaul freight challenges. The numbers of trucks on local, suburban and regional roads across Australia must have doubled in the past decade or so.
At the same time, both levels of government have been lax for decades to ensure high standards of heavy vehicles and the professional competency of truck drivers. Australian trucking has become a cowboy game plagued by industry cost cutting and unreasonable delivery expectations. The industry’s problems compound down to the truckie.
Truck drivers across Australia are no longer paid a fair hourly rate for their work, but have been reduced to being paid by a minimalist ‘trip rate’. So the more trips they do, the more they get paid. Overnight linehaul trucking is a ticking time bomb.
Truck drivers across Australia more often than not are no longer paid employees who are professionally trained by their employers. They are typically owner driver sub contractors with a massive bank mortgage tied to the truck or prime mover they own. They only get paid by the runs they do and have all the burden of maintenance, repairs, insurance and loan repayments. That is before paying themselves a wage. Forget leave and superannuation.
Trucking industry professionalism is out the door. Anyone can get a truck licence. The concept of trucking being a profession in Australia in the days of TNT and Mayne Nickless has long become a distant memory. It is a mugs game now.
Truck drivers, motorists and roadside communities are the victims of dumbed down bad government transport policy. The only ones who are benefiting from cheap dumbed down trucking are the trucking magnates and their corporate retail clients. The politicians save money building trucking roads instead of big picture rail and integrated multimodal logistics. But roads for trucks is short term thinking. It is a policy that has ignored road users’ rights to expect the highest standards of road safety.
Australia’s trucking regime is sapping billions for faster and wider roads instead of long term investment in freight rail,just like their doing to the Great Western Highway to freight produce and goods across the continent. It’s to hell with the local communities they rip up along the way. It’s to hell with the native habitat they rip up to build wider and new trucking expressways. When fuel and toxic chemicals spill from overturned trucks, it’s to hell with the downstream environment.
More roadside communities are increasing exposed to the risk of deadly speeding trucks, and people are dying as a result.
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Safety First Residents of the roadside community of Woodford in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney protest over losing their pedestrian crossing so that trucks can cruise nudging 90kph through their village. [Photo by Jodi McConaghy, 20130608]
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The NSW Government’s RTA-come-RMS (roads authority) has “ripped the heart” out of Woodford.
Woodford Progress Association spokesman Ian Robinson told 100 residents in a protest rally last June that Woodford was “once known as the heart of the Mountains but the RMS has ripped the heart right out of our town”. Mr Robinson says the current plans leaves the elderly stranded, splits the town in two and forces school children to make a large detour to get to their bus stop, he said.
“Without lights across the highway within the vicinity of the Woodford Academy, not only children, but also residents and fire brigade volunteers on the north side are cut off from south side neighbours [and] the elderly … are stranded in their own village,” he said.
The truck-centric civil engineers with the RTA-come-RMS expect local residents to take a two kilometre detour to use the pedestrian bridge at Woodford railway station.
Mr Robinson said:
“They also now tell us that they do not regard Woodford as a ‘town’ and that they want to run four lanes of traffic at 80 km/hr right through the heart of Woodford.”
Cheap but dangerous seagull intersections are to be built in the centre of the new wider trucking expressway between massive trucks doing 90kph down the hill through Woodford.
A third resident petition to the NSW Roads Minister has again been ignored. It’s all about trucks with the politicians.
(Former) councillor Geordie Williamson, a Woodford resident, says the plan also threatens the lives of the 2500 Woodford residents.
“The very least RMS can do is grant residents a safe means of crossing the newly-widened highway. Failing to do so will virtually guarantee injury or loss of life in the years to come,” Clr Williamson said. “The highway should not only be designed to massage the bottom line of freight haulage companies.”
The Mona Vale Road trucking experienceComing to a roadside community near you.
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Footnote
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Government belatedly issues Cootes Transport with 126 Defect Notices
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<< Police believe mechanical problems are the most likely cause of the fatal crash involving the Cootes Transport petrol tanker since the out-of-control fuel tanker ploughed into a power pole and four cars before erupting in a fireball on Mona Vale Road.
A Mr Shane Day has been identified as the driver of the petrol tanker, who works for Cootes Transport. It is not clear if he is an employee or a contractor, but industry probability would like be the latter and not paid by Cootes by the hour.
So two men were burnt alive when this Cootes petrol tanker lost control on Mona Vale Road at Mona Vale about 3:40pm (AEST) yesterday. Police say the dead men are a 71-year-old local and a man in his 60s from interstate. Both men were travelling in the same car, when this trucking wall of death bore down upon them.
Assistant Police Commissioner John Hartley:
“It certainly looks like they were killed at the scene by the fire rather than the crash itself.”
They were burnt alive.
Twelve trucks operated by Cootes Transport have been taken off the road. Inspectors from the New South Wales Government’s Roads and Maritime Services have subsequently inspected more than 80 Cootes Transport trucks at checking stations in Sydney and Newcastle late this afternoon. The company has been issued with 26 defect notices and 12 trucks have been taken off the road.
[Ed: A belated slap on the wrist for purported negligence causing two men to burn to death, just to pacify the media and political fallout. Government reactive and random monitoring of safety is negligent cost cutting and so life costing. At no time should unroadworthy trucks be in service. At no time should unprofessional heavy vehicle drivers be behind the wheel. It must cost more, and so be it. Next week as the media interest fades, it’ll be government trucking as usual and billion dollar truck magnate profit as usual].
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Mr Hartley:
“We’re investigating a number of factors that may have contributed to the crash but at this stage we’re looking at the possibility of mechanical failure on the truck itself. That’s probably the most important lead we have at this stage. The vehicle needs to be fully examined properly. At the end of the day we’ll find that something quite simple such as mechanical failure or a mistake by the driver has caused these fatal consequences.”
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Meanwhile, the toxic spill caused by a fuel tanker’s 18,000 litres of petrol from the exploded tanker has flooded and contaminated surrounding waterways and bushland.
A mix of fuel and fire retardant has leaked into the surrounding waterways for at least a 1.5 kilometre radius.
A toxic mix of 18,000 litres of petrol and fire retardant polluting surrounding waterways.Without trucks Australia may stop, but with the current trucking mentality people are dying, like the two men burnt to death in the above car.
(Source: ABC News)
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NSW Fire Brigade Superintendent Ian Krimmer:
“It is a big operation to clean up the leaking fuel which has seeped into drains and waterways at Mona Vale. We’re placing sand in a number of those drains to contain the fuel spillage,” he said. It’s still unknown how much fuel has leaked into those drains. It could take several days to mop up and clean up that particular situation.”
Riverside Refridgerated Transport semi-trailer loses control at speed at night in the wet on the Great Western Highway in an 80kph zoneThen crashes into a Springwood home narrowly missing the occupants. Last Monday 20130916 near midnight
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This loaded semi-trailer was being driven by 43 year old truck driver from Cowra, where Riverside Refridgerated Transport is based. It was near midnight and he was likely delivering refridgerated farm produce to Sydney markets.
Problem is that it was wet and along that section of the Great Western Highway through Springwood the speed limit is 80kph. So the truck driver must have been either speeding or fell asleep at the wheel, or both. The semi careered off the highway on the right bend and ploughed into a telegraph pole, cutting it in half under the force, then crashed into the side yard of 2 Boland Avenue, just metres from the house and its innocent occupants.
So much for carting Cowra’s best produce to marketPay peanuts, cut corners…
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The crash also ruptured a gas main, which caused a significant leak, causing all west bound lanes of the highway to be closed for one and a half hours. Police also had to evacuate residents from another two nearby homes.
What caused the crash? The media is quick to report the crash as a newsworthy story, but rarely investigates the cause nor takes much interest in the repeated recurrence on our highways.
The government authority responsible for trucking operations and for road design and safety across New South Wales is the Roads and Maritime Services (the old RTA-com-RMS, just rebranded). There is no crash barrier on this right bend of the Great Western Highway, yet this particular road section allows for all vehicles to travel at 80 kph. It is just past a down hill run, so how many vehicles travelling east typically nudge 90 kph, including trucks?
The RTA-come-RMS doesn’t care. Has it ever had speed monitoring at this location? Road policy at the RTA-come-RMS is that crash barriers and upgrades to highway safety are not implemented unless there is a history of “crash data”. Someone has to die before the RTA-come-RMS does anything.
Consider the nearby George Street intersection with the Great Western Highway just a kilometre east. When the highway was widened gto four lanes and tranformed into a 80 kph trucking expressway, George Street access was without traffic lights. Entry into the highway was Russian Roulette. Around this four laned expressway section of the Great Western Highway between 2000 and 2010, as it travels through Springwood, some 137 crashes have been documented according to Blue Mountains Council records. [Source: ‘Springwood to Valley Heights Link Road -Traffic Modelling Report, 20120408, by GST Consultants p.5, – see report attached at end of this article].
Wider and faster is not safer! More faster bigger trucks are not safer!
Midnight trucking is inherently deadly because late and night and the early hours of the morning only defies the human biological clock when humans naturally need sleep. Graveyard shift work on the road through the night is killing truck drivers and fellow motorists sharing the highway. Midnight trucking is a ticking time bomb.
Fatigue Management is a farce …just don’t forget to spell towns properly in your log book.
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Yet governments across Australia including the New South Wales government are encouraging this unnatural practice, by accommodating the trucking industry with bigger roads and transforming regional highways like the Great Western Highway into national trucking expressways.
And as they build bigger roads for bigger trucks, they destroy the environment and roadside communities.
Australian governments at national and state levels are changing laws to allow for larger and longer trucks B-doubles and B-triples to do the overnight linehaul task best suited to trains.
B-triples (basically ‘road-trains’) have already been introduced on regional highways in South Australian, Queensland and Victoria
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Yet despite national legislation to try to address the systemic fatigue problem amongst linehaul truck drivers, goivernment agencies like the RTA-come-RMS provbide not fatigue managemnent infratructure along the entire length of the Great Western Higwhay between Penrith and Orange.
It’s a disgraceful “she’ll be right” mindset – just use the servos or park your rig on the highway shoulder outside local residents homes, like opposite the Caltex servo in Mount Victiria and leave your refrigerator compressor on all night.
Midnight Refridgeration…passing through a town near you
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Five days previously in Adelaide, on Wednesday 20130911, at about 1:00 am a B-Double left Glen Osmond Drive in the suburb of Frewville and collected a parked van, stobie pole, water hydrant and gas meter, before coming to a rest in the front of the Singapore House restaurant at 203 Glen Osmond Road.
Not the first time for midnight trucking on four laned sections of the Great Western Highway..and this is before you get to the deadly six-laned M4.
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Still, the NSW Government remains manifestly committed to its 20th Century trucking mindset, ignoring big picture freight rail. It has this week just announced it will spend $11.5 billion on a 33 km trucking motorway across Sydney. That is nearly a third of the annual Gross Domestic Product of New South Wales.
Just as the F3 was widened from two lanes each way, the existing M4 is to be widened to four lanes each way.
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.
Toxic liquid chemicals being trucked through the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area
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The New South Wales Government decision in the late 1990s to permit 19-metre B-doubles to operate along the Great Western Highway was recognised by many informed Blue Mountains residents as the thin end of the wedge to encourage bigger and faster trucks and to extend Sydney sprawl.
Its planning minister in 2008, Frank Sartor, famously heralded:
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“Few understand how much transport influences land use patterns. Transport leads land use. Once an expressway or railway is built, it is easy to change the zoning and development laws to increase the population along the corridor.”
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~ Frank Sartor, NSW Planning Minister, Sydney Morning Herald, 20080929, p11.
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The Greater Blue Mountains is a vast forested wilderness covering over one million hectares, characterised by ancient sandstone tablelands and escarpments, ancient temperate eucalypt forest types, rainforests, heathlands and swamps containing rare and endemic flora and ecological communities. It was formally inscribed on the World Heritage List on 29 November 2000 and constitutes one of the largest and most intact tracts of protected bushland in Australia.
Along the headwaters of the Jamison Valley above Wentworth Falls, the Jamison Creek flows as a stormwater drain underneath the Great Western Highway.
On or about 7th July 2012, a large quantity of toxic pyrethrin, used as a fumigation pesticide, was dumped into the creek resulting in extermination of all aquatic wildlife downstream and into the World Heritage below. [Source: ‘Health risk posed by Wentworth Falls creek, 20120711, Blue Mountains Gazette newspaper, ^http://www.bluemountainsgazette.com.au/story/273589/health-risk-posed-by-wentworth-falls-creek/]
A year on and still no prosecution has been made against the culprit known by both the local council and the EPA. The contamination could easily have come from the overturning of one of the many trucks that ply the highway now carting toxic chemicals, nudging 90kph.
The Great Western Highway winds its way over the central plateau ridgeline of the Blue Mountains east to west from Sydney. In every respect, the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area is juxtaposed downstream of this highway.
Increasingly, the Great Western Highway is becoming dominated by larger trucks and an increasing frequency of B-Double Trucks carting sand and soil, containers, palletised freight, heavy machinery and bulk liquids. Transport companies are not delivering to the Blue Mountains; they are transiting through the Blue Mountains for destinations far beyond including Perth and Darwin.
However, local Blue Mountains supporters of this website have informed us that recently the trend is worse, with chemical tank containers now being sighted. The company transporting these bulk chemicals is Chemtrans, a subsidiary of corporate trucker, Scott Corporation, based in Sydney’s west industrial suburb of Padstow.
The tanks display hazardous warnings on the sides.
What chemicals are being trucked over the Blue Mountains anyway?
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Sulphuric Acid?
Phosphoric Acid?
Anhydrous Ammonia?
Vinyl Chloride Monimor?
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Kills Nature
How can this be? What if there is a crash and a spill?
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With substandard toxic containment infrastructure, World Heritage dies.
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The Great Western Highway is not designed to contain large flash runoff from storms, let alone contain chemical spills toxic to ecology from entering the downstream headwaters and water courses that flow from the ridgeline down into the surrounding Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area.
So when did the NSW Government give permission for bulk toxic chemicals to be transported through the Blue Mountains? What community consultation did the government not engage in? What legislative safety and governance restrictions were not enacted?
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She’ll Be Right, eh Barry O’Farrell?
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..Just like when in May this year, a FULLY-LADEN DOUBLE FUEL TANKERoverturned 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.
She’ll Be Right, eh Barry O’Farrell?
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The scene at Sunday morning’s truck crash near Medlow Bath. Driver fatigue is suspected as a possible cause of the smash.
[Source: Photo: Len Ashworth, Lithgow Mercury, in article ‘Lucky escape for truck driver, 20130515, by Len Ashworth, Blue Mountains Gazette newspaper, ^http://www.bluemountainsgazette.com.au/story/1500162/lucky-escape-for-truck-driver/]
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The tanker overturned in bushland just upstream from the Cascade Water Catchment that stores drinking water for the region and in which fines for tresspass are $44,000.
But Ron Finemores Transport was not fined the $44,000. Why not?
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Sydney Water ‘Special Areas’ prohibit public entry in order to protect water quality.
This benefits the community by:
Protecting water quality
Protecting large areas of bushland and plant and animal habitats
Protecting threatened plants and animal species
Preserving evidence of Aboriginal occupation dating back many thousands of years, and
Preserving evidence of non-Aboriginal exploration, early settlement and phases of development such as forestry, mining and dam building.
What Next? Trucking nuclear waste through the Blue Mountains?
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Don’t put it past them. There are plans afoot to truck radioactive waste and parts of Australia’s old 1960s nuclear reactor out of Sydney under plans to clean up the Lucas Heights nuclear facility and develop a national hazardous-waste dump in the outback.
The trucks will necessarily pass by residential homes carrying a radioactive high-flux reactor’ and spent fuel rods.
The Sources of Radioactive Waste
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The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, which manages the Lucas Heights Nuclear Reactor, has been given $28.7 million to prepare for the move. The four-year funding package will pay for ‘pre-disposal conditioning of existing radioactive waste in preparation for long-term underground storage, including radioactive contaminated buildings and infrastructure at Lucas Heights.
Also planned to be trucked is nuclear contaminated soil waste from the former uranium smelter site at Hunters Hill.
Also planned to be trucked is spent fuel rods after they were reprocessed at a nuclear facility in France.
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The target waste disposal site is on remote Aboriginal land near Muckaty, 800 km south of Darwin (specifically 100 km north of Tennant Creek) in the Northern Territory. The most direct trucking route, some 2,387 km from Lucas Heights, is via the Great Western Highway through the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area.
The only other feasible trucking route is via the Pacific Highway to Newcastle and then north-west along the Golden Highway, which is unlikely because it would pass through more densely populated communities.
The Australian Government approved its Radioactive Waste Dump at Muckaty in the Northern Territory under the National Radioactive Waste Management Bill 2010, passed through the Senate on 13 March, 2012.
This was in blatant contradiction to years of resistance and opposition from from the remote and marginalised Muckaty indigenous community and supportive environmental groups. Traditonal Owners maintain that both the Northern Land Council and the Commonwealth failed to accurately identify, consult with and receive their consent and are seeking to reverse the decision.
What’s new?
Responsible radioactive waste management needs an approach based on:
Non-imposition
Community consent
Scientific and procedural rigour.
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None of the approaches was observed during the opaque transition of this proposal into law.
The Australian Government’s preferred site for Nuclear Waste is Muckaty Station, near Tennant Creek,trucked from Lucas Heights, Botany and Hunters Hill through the Blue Mountains.
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In 1997, a train carrying 180 tonnes of high-level nuclear waste derailed in France. In 2004, a truck spilled strontium-90 onto Highway 95 in Roane County, Tennessee.
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She’ll be Right!
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America 2011:
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<< With the passage of Senate Bill 1504 in the Texas Senate (Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact) , radioactive waste could soon be barreling down Texas highways and through our neighborhoods by way of Interstate 10 through Houston, San Antonio and El Paso; Interstate-20 and Interstate-30 though Dallas and Forth Worth, Midland and Odessa ; and Interstate-27 though Lubbock and Amarillo.
The greatest risk we face is having an accident with vehicles containing waste. Cleanup estimates range from $100 to a billion dollars or more according to the U.S. Department of Energy, but the state of Texas has set aside only $500,000. Taxpayers would pay the rest.
And what if an accident happens next to a school, playground or hospital? Don’t we want to make sure that our local emergency responders have the training and equipment needed to handle an accident where a truck is leaking radioactive waste?
Thanks to Senator Seliger’s leadership, there have been some important protections added in, but a number of loopholes remain that dramatically increases the risk and liability assumed by Texas taxpayers. There is still a chance to close these loopholes. This bill goes to the Texas House floor next week and Texans should ask their legislators to make sure that there is an immediate thorough analysis of transportation risks, costs of cleaning up contamination from accidents or leaks, and waste capacity at the site.
As the Japanese nuclear disaster has taught us, cleaning up after radioactive waste can be a costly and dangerous process. We urge the house to make sure we have protective measures in place before an accident. >>
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[Ed: The Texas Senate Bill 1504 was made effective 9th January 2011]
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/]
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.”
The Dangerous Trucking Menace is becoming increasingly prevalent across the Blue Mountains on both the Great Western Highway and the Bells Line of Road.
This is because the ‘Roads and Traffic Authority‘ – rebranded but culturally unchanged to the ‘Transport Roads and Maritime Services‘ is tasked to re-engineer the Great Western Highway, a regional and local road, to facilitate more trucks.
The trucking mandate is to transform the highway into an expressway designed for bigger and faster trucks, just like the F3 Motorway between outer Sydney and the regional city of Newcastle, as infamously deadly that the F3 is.
The trucking mandate is national and driven by an Australia-wide freight transport policy which prioritises 95% road and 5% rail. The truck-centric policy is steered by self-interested influential trucking magnates and their industry, whose driving catch-phrase is ‘time is money‘ and so any community along the highway that slows their trucks down must be dealt with. They fund political economic rationalism which prefers to outsource and privatise instead of responsibly investing in national rail freight infrastructure.
Highway communities are treated as second class citizens. Residents like the many thousands across the Blue Mountains are increasing exposed to the Dangerous Trucking Menace, when sharing the highway and from their homes:
Bigger trucks and more B-Doubles
Speeding trucks
Tailgating trucks
Trucks over the centre double lines
Truck drivers frequently seen talking on a mobile phone while driving
Exhaust brakes used at all hours through towns and villages
Collisions and deaths
Overturned trucks
Broken down trucks
Trucks on fire
Truck tankers with gas, fuel or hazardous chemical leaks
Selfish truckies sleeping outside residents at all hours with refrigerator motors running at Mt Victoria
Same selfish truckies found urinating and defecating in residents’ front verges at Mt Victoria.
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[Ed: And truckies and their supporting wives wonder why truckies have a bad reputation and often cop blame? Trucking is not a profession. It is a uncontrolled cowboy skill-easy job earning pittance, attracting imbeciles and causing reckless maiming and death. This Editor has continued to hold an ‘HC’ licence from 1989, but income-wise has long since moved on.]
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Source: Blackheath Highway Action Group
‘The Blackheath Highway Action group was formed in 2008 to fight a proposal to turn the Great Western Highway
into a 4 lane high productivity freight vehicle (25/26/30m B-doubles) route across the Blue Mountains.
Website: ^http://www.bag.asn.au
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Hardly a week passes without some report of a truck-related incident along the Great Western Highway and especially along the Hume Freeway, F3 Motorway and Pacific Highway, and that is just in New South Wales. One local resident of the Blue Mountains, a Marcus Padley, terms these ‘Mack Truck Moments‘. If only it were funny. Last month Sarina Heta in her Kia Rio sedan wasn’t laughing when she was violently crushed between two B-doubles on the Great Western highway at Blackheath.
Australia has no central register of truck incidents, but if it did one wagers that the occurrence would be a daily one. This is unacceptable yet the trucking menace is encouraged and poorly controlled or policed.
Currently, the Great Western Highway is being widened to four lanes at Hazelbrook at great expense and considerable delay due to poor due diligence and mismanagement. In the re-engineered design, all interests of trucks are priorities by the road engineers, while local residents have little or no say. As each stage of widening transformation takes place, successive affected communities become disheartened and confronted by the bulldozing of the regional highway and its replacement with a much wider trucking expressway.
Lawson has been completely obliterated and its character ‘lobotomised‘ as a town.
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Lawson before the Trucking Expressway bulldozers
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Neo-LawsonShops bulldozedVillage Character urban lobotomised
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Soon it will be neighbouring Bullaburra’s turn and highway properties are already up for sale.
Bullaburra: On Trucking Death Row
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The Bells Line of Road across the Blue Mountains is also having its side shoulders widened to accommodate B-double trucks 24/7 and is involving the destruction of native vegetation for kilometres. Stage 1 is around the agricultural village of Bilpin.
Many sand and gravel B-Double style trucks use the Bells Line of Road between quarries and Sydney. They are paid a trip rate and so travel at excessive speed to maximise trips per day. The road has no speed cameras and is rarely patrolled by police. It has become an infamous trucking cowboy route. In June 2012, a sand loaded semi-trailer collided with two cars near Mt Tomah. The truck was probably over the centre double lines like they usually are.
In May 2011, a gravel truck overturned on the Bells Line of Road while exceeding the speed limit. The road is a renowned trucking menace and car drivers and motorbike riders use it at their own risk. In July 2009, a motorcyclist has been killed on the Bells Line of Road 10 kilometres west of the Mount Tomah. It must have surely been a ‘Mack Truck Moment‘.
The government’s Trucking Expressway Mandate is to keep widening the Great Western Highway out to mainly four lanes between outer Sydney where the 6-lane M4 Motorway currently links to, and all the way out to Orange and beyond. The long-term trucking strategy to eventually encourage 24/7 trucking of B-doubles between Sydney and Perth and Darwin. In western Victoria even B-triples have been introduced, which are basically Road Trains – give the trucking lobby time.
B-doubles have to date been prohibited from the Great Western Highway due to its narrow unsuitable design and to respect the fact that it passes through nearly two dozen regional town and villages. But that is constantly being challenged and undermined by hard-nosed government policy.
The dangerous misguided premise by the policy and by road engineers is that a wider a faster trucking expressway will be safer than the existing highway, yet the evidence refutes that. All one needs to do is consider the repeated statistical record of trucks incidents along the already widened sections of the Great Western highway, and indeed along the RTA/RMS’s favourite creation, its F3 Motorway.
The following recent reports of trucking incidents are testament to the trucking menace that trucking expressways attract.
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2nd March 2013: ‘Overturned Truck Closes F3 at Mount White’
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<<Mount White: The F3 remains closed northbound approaching the Old Pacific Highway Overpass in Mount White due to a truck accident. Motorists are being diverted off the F3 onto the Old Pacific Highway at the Hawkesbury Interchange in Mooney Mooney. Emergency services and RMS crews are on site, working to clear the accident as quickly as possible…>
<<All southbound and northbound lanes have reopened on the F3 near Motorway Link Road in Warnervale now that gas bottles are no longer leaking on the back of a truck. Gas cylinders began leaking on the back of a truck near Motorway Link Road about 6.45pm, forcing the closure of southbound lanes and one northbound lane.>>
<<There was a lucky escape for a truck driver on the Central Coast yesterday. Just after 11am, a Rutherford-bound semi trailer full of clay caught fire, forcing the closure of northbound lanes of the F3 Freeway at Mount White. The driver, from Victoria, had pulled the rig over after seeing smoke billowing from the engine. He escaped unharmed but the same couldn’t be said for the prime mover.>>
7 Feb 2013: ‘Hume Highway traffic affected after truck roll over’
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<<Both northbound lanes of the Hume Highway were closed south of Tarcutta following the accident but one northbound lane was since been re-opened. The accident about 15km south of Tarcutta occurred shortly after 9am this morning. Emergency services are in attendance and a HAZMAT team has been sent following reports of diesel over the road. Motorists are advised to drive with caution if in the area and to allow for extra time on their journey.>>
Nov 2012: ‘Traffic slow at Ourimbah following truck rollover’
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<<Traffic is slowing on the F3 Freeway near Ourimbah on the Central Coast where a semi-trailer rolled onto its side about 9.30am. It is understood the driver was trapped for a short time but has since been freed and police are on-site managing the clean up and traffic control.>>
Mar 2012: ‘Police target second trucking firm over safety’
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<<New South Wales police are targeting another truck company over suspected serious safety breaches. Trucks from the South Australian-based Scott’s transport are being stopped at several heavy vehicle checking stations, including the F3 freeway at Mount White and the Hume Highway at Marulan. Officials from Roads and Maritime Services are also involved in the operation.
Police say one of the company’s B-double trucks was caught driving on the Hume Highway at Mittagong at 142 kilometres per hour early on Monday morning. Officers are searching for 32 Scott’s trucks out of the company’s fleet of more than 300, and say that number may rise. They say the trucks will then undergo a comprehensive mechanical inspection. The investigation follows an operation against Sydney-based Lennons Transport Services, where police say speed limiting devices in numerous trucks had been tampered with.
A Lennons driver is before the courts charged over a crash that killed three people on the Hume Highway at Menangle in January.>>
Jul 2011: ‘Delays on freeway after truck rollover’
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<<NSW motorists on the F3 freeway are being warned to expect significant delays after a B-double truck rolled over at Cooranbong southwest of Newcastle. The truck, which was carrying milk, rolled onto its side and skidded for several metres at the Freemans Drive overpass before being hit by a ute.
The truck driver was taken to hospital but the woman driving the ute escaped injury. A salvage operation is underway but it is expected the freeway will be blocked for several hours. Southbound traffic is being diverted at Palmers Drive to re-enter at Freemans Drive southbound on-ramp.>>
Lost load … the scene at Chullora where a refrigerated pantech fell from a truck
[Source: Picture: Bill Hearne, The Daily Telegraph]
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<<It was a year of carnage for the state’s truck drivers, with the number of fatal accidents increasing by more than 90 per cent, government statistics reveal.
There were 23 fatal crashes involving heavy rigid trucks – non-articulated vehicles greater than eight tonnes – in 2009. This was up from 12 a year earlier, the Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics (BITRE) said. The BITRE data also showed the number of people killed in accidents involving heavy rigid trucks in NSW was up 100 per cent to 24, when deaths in Australia decreased by 14.7 per cent.
The RTA dismissed claims that the increase in the road death statistics were a cause for concern. The RTA’s NSW Centre for Road Safety director Soames Job said the increase was the result of a reduction in deaths the year before. “The main number that produces the outcome is the low number of deaths the previous year. It was extraordinary that we had so few in 2008,” Dr Job said.
Fatal accidents involving articulated trucks fell from 47 in 2008 to 34 in 2009, BITRE said. The figures came as a truck driver had a lucky escape in Sydney’s west on Tuesday night.
The refrigerated section of a meat carrier sheared from the truck and rolled on to the Hume Highway flyover at Chullora. A crane was brought in to right the truck to clear the road.
Dr Job said in many crashes, the smaller vehicle might be at fault. “Lots of these accidents will involve speed and fatigue and that is what we are trying to address,” he said. “We have this large program of speed enforcement in areas where there is known heavy truck traffic and that is why we have said we’ll roll out 20 locations of point-to-point speed cameras across our highway network”..>>
Aug 2010: ‘B-double crashes on F3, shutting southbound lanes’
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<<Motorists using the F3 Freeway are being told to divert their travel or face significant traffic delays after a B-double carrying gas cylinders crashed today. The truck was carrying 1600 nine kilogram cylinders when it hit the eastern brick wall just before the Hawkesbury River Bridge about 9:15am.
No one was injured but the crash forced police to close two of the three southbound lanes. Northbound lanes remain open and all lanes are expected to be opened by 4pm. Southbound motorists are being urged to avoid the area by taking the Pacific Highway exit at Brooklyn,” a police statement says. “The gas cylinders are being removed by hand for safety reasons prior to the B-double being removed. Inquiries into the crash are continuing.>>
Jun 2010: ‘Driver dies after flipping truck on F3’
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<<A man has died in a truck accident on the F3 at Mount White on the New South Wales central coast yesterday. Police say the driver was turning into a heavy vehicle checking station when his trailer jackknifed at about 3:30pm. The truck then flipped onto the driver’s side before sliding into a power pole. The male driver, who has not been formally identified, was killed. A report will be prepared for the Coroner.>>
Apr 2010: ‘Highway smash raises response time questions’
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<<The New South Wales Roads Minister says the RTA did not act quickly enough to re-open the F3 Freeway after an accident south of Newcastle yesterday, which left motorists stranded for hours.
A flat-bed truck ran into the back of a fully loaded fuel tanker on the freeway around midday near Mount White, with the accident closing all northbound lanes.
The RTA set up a contraflow around the accident site, using southbound lanes for motorists heading north, and diverting southbound traffic along the old Pacific Highway.
Questions are being asked why it took so long to set up the contraflow, which was not in place until at least eight hours after the crash.
Hazmat crews worked to remove fuel from the tanker, with the Fire Brigade declaring the area safe sometime around midnight.
The Roads and Transport Minister David Campbell says he will be meeting with the RTA today to discuss the delay in re-opening the road.>>
<<A truck driver has been left with serious head injuries after an accident on the New South Wales central coast. Police say the accident happened on the F3 Freeway at Mount White at about 11:40am (AEST). It is believed a flat-bed vegetable truck ran into the back of a fully laden petrol tanker…>>
Sep 2009: ‘Delays on Sydney’s F3 after another fatality’
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<<Traffic is being delayed on the F3 freeway as police investigate a death near the Mooney Mooney Bridge, south of Gosford. Police say a man fell onto the road and died just after 1pm AEST. All northbound lanes have been closed while investigations are carried out…>>
Aug 2009: ‘Young parents and baby die in F3 inferno’
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The wreckage on the F3 after the fatal crashA couple and baby killed
[Photo: Matt Black Productions]
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<<A young Gosford couple and their baby were killed when their car burst into flames in a crash involving a B-double truck and another car on the F3 freeway on the NSW Central Coast yesterday night.
Police said two cars stopped on the freeway before a truck struck both vehicles from behind, killing a 27-year-old woman, a 32-year-old man and a five-month-old baby at 10.50pm. The impact caused one of the cars and the truck to catch fire. There was also another triple fatality in central-northern NSW about 10.30am today on Newell Highway near Narrabri.
Police said the bodies of the young family were found in the charred car on the 110 km/h marked stretch of road near the Mount White weigh-bridge. Two other people were taken to Gosford Hospital with various injuries.
Metropolitan crash investigator Sergeant Peter Jenkins said the family’s car was completely “incinerated”. “For some reason the two vehicles have become stationary in lane one, northbound, they’re not in the breakdown lane, they’re actually still in the traffic lane,” he told Macquarie Radio today.
“The young family’s car is the southern vehicle, another northbound car has braked and stopped and swerved to miss it and entered into the breakdown lane.
“Since that’s happened the truck driver’s been exposed to these two vehicles and he’s done what he can, but he hasn’t been able to avoid these two vehicles.” He said the truck driver was suffering from shock and had been discharged from hospital after speaking to police.
Towers Transport general manager John Perkins said the truck driver was very upset. “He has no apparent physical injuries … he’s extremely distraught,” Mr Perkins said.
He would not comment on the circumstances surrounding the accident but said the company had never been involved in a fatal crash. “We’ve been in business for 20 years, we’ve got about 50 trucks, and this is the first time we’ve been faced with something like this,” Mr Perkins said.
The driver of the second car was taken to Gosford Hospital for treatment, but police have been unable to to speak to him. His condition is unknown. The family has been identified and some relatives have been notified of their deaths, he said.
Sergeant Jenkins played down claims the stretch of road was dangerous, saying he hadn’t been able to attribute a serious crash in the area to the design or condition of the road in the past 20 years.
“I think the F3 is actually quite a good stretch of road in most parts,” he said.
“Inquiries into the circumstances leading up to the crash are continuing,” a police spokesman said.
‘Expect long delays’
Northbound lanes on the F3 freeway out of Sydney have reopened to traffic but motorists are warned to expect long delays.
All northbound lanes were closed while police removed the bodies and wreckage and carried out an investigation until about 11.20am today.
Despite reopening the lanes, traffic is still banked up for almost 10 kilometres between Mount White and the Hawkesbury River, the Road and Traffic Authority says.
“All lanes are open on the F3, but traffic will take a while to clear, an RTA spokesman told AAP.
“Traffic is still heavy with significant delays and people who have been diverted on to the Pacific Highway will also experience significant delays.”
It is the second major crash in two days on the F3 in that area. Four people escaped serious injury in a six-vehicle crash caused when a piece of scaffolding fell off a semitrailer at Mooney Mooney yesterday.
Police are appealing for anyone who might have seen the crash and are yet to speak to crash investigators to contact them via Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.>>
<<Car drivers have had lots of restrictions placed on them over the years in an attempt to reduce the road toll including school zones due to a slight increase in accidents. A 100% increase in heavy truck deaths is not acceptable. Reduce their speeds to 60kph and reduce fatigue by reducing driving time to 6 hours per day and accidents due to speed or fatigue will drop. Imagine what would happen if car deaths increased 100%. Would we see changes, you can bet on it.>>
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Rod Pickin:
<<Until the maximum road speed for heavy vehicles is limited to 80kph, you can expect a continued increase in accidents/deaths involving these vehicles. Currently heavy vehicles are being driven dangerously and at high speed as a result of work/deadline pressures imposed upon drivers by owners/operators and major supermarket customers all sanctioned by govt. bodies.
Truly how rediculous is it that a fully loaded B-Double even road train fuel/gas tanker is legally allowed on our highways in the wet to travel at 100kph? that is just inviting major drama so one is entitled to ask, who is putting presure on who in order that this be allowed.>
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Rob:
<<I’ve noticed the lack of ‘100 speed limited’ signs on most trucks these days as they go flying past me on the highways while I’m obeying the limit.>>
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Julian:
<<This is sad. The carnage on the F3 goes on, mostly involving semi-trailers. When I take my family on holidays, trucks tail-gate us at 120Kph, and scare the hell out of me.>>
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Young parents and toddler die in fiery crash:
<<The solution is simple. make speed limit for trucks 70kmh max and must not move out of left lane for whatever reason. the F3 is the most dangerous freeway I have ever driven on, doing 100-110 on blind hills and bends a truck has no way of stopping fast if it has to.>>
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David:
<<I drive the F3 every day and it is a miracle that more accidents such as these do no occur. In peak hour the average speed of vehicles is in excess of speed limit and cars do this with the knowledge that they are highly unlikely to be caught. When police do drive along the freeway they also average around 10 kph above the speed limit and cars just happily follow them at that speed.
In the road works area you have speed variances of between 80 kph (speed limit) and 120 kph with average of around 100 kph. To sit on the speed limit along that road is nearly more dangerous than speeding. This is a tragedy as are all road deaths and one can only hope that this does force the authorities into action so that something positive comes from it to get some sanity back into the way drivers behave on this road.>>
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mirage:
<<I’m sure its another example of a truck driver that was speeding – I travel every few weeks up and down the F3 in a normal sedan at 100-110km per hour and most trucks fly past me except when going up the hills…the Police are not doing enough and some truck drivers just think they can do what they want…same attitude problem as the ferry drivers on the harbour and bus drivers…they think the road is theirs and they are smarter than the rest, professional drivers…they should know that in the end the extra speed doesnt make much difference…>>
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More Trains, Less Trucks:
<<One partial solution would be to build a freight line so that we could send more goods by rail. Think about howmany trucks would be off the road for each extra train. I am sure that the truckies would complain about potential loss of jobs, but that wasn’t the case when the Ghan was extended from Alice Springs to Darwin.
Instead of losing jobs, the truckies found that they had more short haul jobs supplying the freight trains and less long haul jobs with all of the associated safety issues.>>
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Kate:
<<I used to drive the F3 regularly but now catch the train as it is too dangerous. If you look at the accident record over the past few years, you will see most involve trucks. The F3 is one of the few decent roads in the state, yet now ruined by huge speeding semis and other trucks that are a terrible hazard to cars. On top of that everyone speeds like the devil, with impunity it seems. All those massive tonnes of heavy goods in transit should be shipped by rail. The whole transport thing is getting completely out of hand.>>
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frederick:
<<I am often horrified at the increase in trucks on our roads and the frequent aggressive driving adopted by these drivers. Driving generally on our roads has become so bad that this sort of horror is going to keep happening. Anyone who drives at or near the speed limit would know. Unless of course our pollies have the guts to do something about it and the Police start to enforce some of the existing road rules. With three warning signs before every fixed speed camera we might as well adopt a new slogan for NSW – THE DUMB STATE!
How many more lives is it going to take before we come to our senses?>>
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Ian C. Purdie:
<<Yes, so trucks are speed limited to 100 kph, the sign on the back says so. That would be the reason they either tail gate you at 110 kph or overtake.>>
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waqi13:
<<I travel on F3 several times each week for work. At least once a week I have a close call with truck drivers not paying attention to what is going on around them. It seems that 90% of trucks have blinkers and side mirrors that don’t work – they change lanes at the drop of a hat with no indication, and in the worst case scenario to overtake another truck that they cannot go fasther than anyway – creating a long line of traffic, chugging up a hill at much less then the speed limit.
I have learnt to give trucks a wide berth, because they will do what they want to do without checking for any cars around them.>>
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Daniel:
<<It’s a dangerous road at night and drivers need to have full concentration on the freeway. they need to stick to the speed limit. Ive driven on it so many times and I do 110 and others are flying past me all the time. Trucks are going faster than the 100 they are supposed to be doing. Most of the time now I use the old Pacific Highway through to Gosford. its just too dangerous with all the rats on the road.>>
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JSKS:
<<It’s very sad indeed. In fact 110km/hr is a very fast speed for a fully loaded truck. It’s not easy for the truck to stop that easily when their loads are full. At 10.30pm, the truck light shining distance is at best 30 meters. I believed by the time the driver realised that there is a car in front, it’s too late to stop effectively. In other countries, while the Freeway limit is 110km/hr, the maximum speed limit for truck is only 90km/hr. Yes, this will delay delivery time but I think HUMAN LIFE is more important than delivery time.>
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SP233K:
<<I drive on the F3 every day, and seriously no one obeys speed limits,they tailgate,they speed like crazy,the have no regard for anyone else,trucks speed and change lanes cutting people off and don’t care at all. Every day i worry i will end up in an accident and as soon as it gets dark trucks drive about a thousand times worse,they would have no way of stopping quickly.
Police constantly pull over cars (in the event there are actually police patrolling which is not very often). I really think they should be pulling over trucks as well. I hope this is a warning to everyone to be more careful on the F3, surely there have been enough horrific accidents for everyone to see how dangerous it is.
My heart goes out to the families of the people involved in last night’s accident. I drove past this morning and it really was a horrible scene.>>
May 2009: ‘B-double involved in F3 collision with car’
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<<There has been yet another traffic accident on the F3 involving a B-double truck, overnight. About 10.40pm last night (Tuesday), the driver of the B-double truck, a 38-year-old man from Cundletown, allegedly changed lanes and ran straight into a car being driven by a 63-year-old man from Umina. Both vehicles were travelling north along the freeway at Wahroonga, near Alexandria Pde.
When the car was hit, it spun out of control, police said, and collided with the median guardrail. The driver of the car was trapped until emergency crews cut him from the wreckage.
He was taken to the Royal North Shore Hospital with suspected back injuries and remains in a serious but stable condition. Hornsby Police have told the Advocate they will wait on the results of blood test before taking any action. No charges have yet been laid.>>
Apr 2009: ‘F3 truck ‘cut off’ before cliff plunge’
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<<Police are searching for the driver of a white Kenworth truck seen close to a semitrailer that plunged 80 metres off the F3, north of Sydney yesterday. Emergency services workers have recovered the body of the 40-year-old driver. The driver is reported to have been married with a young child.
The semitrailer will be salvaged by crane from 8pm today, with northbound traffic to be diverted from the F3 at Wahroonga. The B-Double Linfox semitrailer was carrying toilet paper when it crashed through a safety barrier at the side of the freeway and fell into the valley near Hornsby about 11.35am yesterday.
Two northbound lanes of the F3 were closed and traffic was diverted after the crash. Police are investigating reports the Sydney man had swerved to miss another truck which had changed lanes in front of him, before his vehicle speared off the road. Police today appealed for the driver of the Kenworth truck to come forward.
“We are appealing for the driver of a white Kenworth that was close to the [semitrailer] at the time of the crash to contact police through the Crime Stoppers hotline and tell us what they know or what they might have seen at the time the truck went over the railing,” a NSW Police spokeswoman said.
Senior Sergeant Peter Jenkins of the Metropolitan Crash Investigation Unit said witnesses told police there were some trucks near the semitrailer before the crash happened.
“It would apply at this stage that they might not have contributed to the crash. They might be totally innocent people driving along. But we would like to interview them because they may know something about the reason why this gentleman has left the roadway,” he said. “So we are appealing to them as witnesses at this stage.”
Senior Sergeant Jenkins said it was raining quite heavily when the accident occurred and police would be investigating all the possible accident factors, including weather, road surface, traffic, mechancial issues and the driver’s schedule.
But Phil Easterbrook, who lives near where the accident happened and heard a bang, said the accident was not unexpected. “We always hear the sound of horns going off and of braking. They are [hooting] to avert an accident because people are cutting them off,” he said. “We hear banging quite regularly from vehicles from accidents happening.”
Mr Easterbrook, who used to drive a truck, said trucks would try to build up speed as they went up the hill, and so would not like other vehicles cutting them off.
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ROAD SURFACE HAZARD
Paul Gerrard, who uses the F3 daily to travel from Kellyville to his work in Tuggerah and back, said the road surface where the accident occurred had been a serious hazard for a few months.
“Approximately four to five months ago the original freeway road surface [bitumen] was removed by mechanical pavement machines in an overnight operation that went for several weeks,” he said. “In the absence of signs it appears the pavement was removed to enable the whole freeway to be resurfaced with bitumen after the widening project [of the freeway] is completed.
Mr Gerrard said the northbound lanes, which were resurfaced, now had a rough texture and were dangerous to drive on especially during heavy rain. “The road gets far too much water and there’s no control. My experience is that, during heavy rain, drivers must slow to approximately 70kmh or the car aquaplanes left. It is an expectation and not random.”
He said the rails along these lanes were dented from large impacts of vehicles hitting them.
An RTA spokesman said that, while it could not comment on the accident as it was the subject of a police investigation, concrete roads such as the ones on the F3 were not uncommon in NSW.
“The RTA regularly carries out tests on road surface across the state and this section of road was last tested in August and September of last year. These tests showed that the road surface provided adequate wet-weather grip,” the spokesman said. The RTA spokesman said it understood the accident took place “on a downhill section where surface water would not accumulate”, and advised motorists to slow down and adjust their driving when there was wet weather.
From 2003 to 2007, there were six crashes reported on the 1km northbound section of of the F3 just north of the Edgeworth David Avenue overpass at Wahroonga, the spokesman said.
None of the crashes involved heavy vehicles and there were no deaths, he said.
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CRANE FAILED TO MOVE SEMI-TRAILER
A crane was brought in to lift the semitrailer, but a 7?-hour operation from 4.30pm to midnight by emergency services failed to move it.
“The boom on it to go down to the truck was not long enough,” an RTA spokeswoman said. A larger 400-tonne crane would be brought in to lift the truck tonight, the spokeswoman said.
It was not yet decided which company would be supplying the crane, although it was likely Linfox would foot the bill, she said.
The RTA said the crane would take three to four hours to assemble, and the same time to disassemble. It said it would take four hours to move the truck. The RTA will close access to the F3 northbound from the Pacific Highway and Pennant Hills Road at Wahroonga during the salvage operation.
Traffic would rejoin the F3 at Berowa. Diversions were expected to be in place until 8am tomorrow, the RTA said. Southbound lanes would not be affected. Yesterday’s fears that the fuel spilt from the truck would cause environmental damage have also dissipated, NSW Fire Brigades spokesman Craig Brierley said.
The diesel from the truck spread over a large area and sank into the soil beneath the truck, but did not reach the water catchment area nearby, Mr Brierley said. The low amount of fuel in the tank and its cargo meant there were fewer fears about its impact on the environment, he said. “There was only 500 litres of diesel on the truck, which is not a lot, so that made the job a lot easier,” Mr Brierley said. Hazmat crews were at the site of the crash for most of yesterday night and would check the area again when the truck was removed, he said.
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[Ed: Was the RTA recklessly culpable for the driver’s death?]
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FUND ESTABLISHED TO HELP FAMILYT OF DEAD TRUCKIE
The young family of the driver will be the recipients of a fund established by transport union officials.
“The man who died yesterday had a young family and what happened can only be described as a tragedy,” Transport Workers’ Union NSW secretary Wayne Forno said today. “The TWU is calling on all members to donate to a fund we are setting up for the man’s family, and Linfox has indicated they will match those donations. “But we are also calling for a full investigation into the incident, and for the coroner to examine how hyper-competitive road freight industry and the inadequate pay and conditions of truck drivers are contributing to more deaths on the road.”
A Linfox spokesman said the company did not comment on donations, but “conditionally we would match what colleagues contribute”.>>
<<There has heavy traffic on the F3 freeway north of Sydney after a truck caught on fire just before 11:00am AEDT today. The accident blocked all northbound lanes at Mount White, but traffic is now moving slowly after a lane was reopened. It is not yet known what caused the blaze.
Kate Martin was driving on the freeway when the accident happened. “It was on fire, really badly on fire, black smoke just streaming out of the truck,” she said. “It took a while for the police to arrive. It was burning for about 10 minutes before any services arrived.”>>
<<Commuters on the New South Wales Central Coast are being urged to delay their drive to Sydney after a crash involving a semi-trailer and several cars on the F3 freeway, near Mount White.
The Ambulance Service says two women and a teenage girl are in a stable condition in hospital after the accident. Roads and Traffic Authority spokesman Alec Brown says all three southbound lanes are blocked and traffic is backed up for three kilometres.
Mr Brown says it is not known how long it will take to clear the accident. “It’s impossible to predict. It really does depend on how smoothly it goes,” he said. “We’ve removed one truck already. We’re working on the rest of the vehicles and that’s something we’re doing as a priority.”
Traffic is being diverted onto the Old Pacific Highway.>>
Motorway Widening CancerRoad Widening is a Chicken and Egg causality dilemma – widen it and they shall come and then congest it, so widen it again…
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<<It doesn’t matter who’s right in this situation. The bigger problem has been the failure of the Australian government for setting unrealistic freight rail goals for Port Botany.
After setting a goal of shipping 40 percent of all Port Botany cargo by rail, the Australian government has dropped its target to 28 percent
“’Forty per cent was unrealistic and unachievable and typified Labor’s propensity to pluck figures out of the air,” the Transport Minister, Gladys Berejiklian, told the Sydney Morning Herald.
The increased number of trucks on the road is already causing considerable delays for motorists. Last Friday, one semi-trailer jack-knifed across one highway, according to the Herald, causing a traffic jam roughly 5 miles long.>>
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
