The Highways Of Death In Australia...those who looked away.

reply to post by Dr Expired


Well, what a rant. In the million or so miles I have driven on Aussie roads and some at very high speeds, my greatest fear is some police officer who cant drive, driving flat out pursuing some driver for going 5 or 10kms over the prescribed speed limit, what a joke.

I wont go into all the other drivers who in many cases should not be on our roads for fear of being classified as discriminating against those that cant drive, and there are many such groups of people.

In all my years of driving I have had a couple of issues with truck drivers, but very rare indeed, most are great drivers, I feel sorry for them, how we have taken all their freedoms. It is such a shame Aussie has become a place run by nannies.

30 years ago, I drove from Melbourne to Sydney, it was late night, raining, I was in a HQ 308 which went pretty well. There was dozens of Trucks on the road, these fellas were passing me at well over 80 to 100 miles an hour, going sideways around the corners one after another like a big truck dance, it was just bloody amazing to be part of the great Truck race.

Now the poor fellas have to pee on the clock and everyone is down on them. I guess the fact that our country is being looted don't matter, is it a case of denial and always shifting the focus on another group, so as to shift the blame and allow the looting to occur, I do wonder.

You might like to have a look at most of the clowns in the poonse mobiles there half the size of a truck and most of the clowns that own them couldn't drive a mini moke, these clowns are great at cutting corners at high speed and killing wild life.

statistics? idiot !
They Fake them...

reply to post by Dr Expired


Although life is by far priority, I have seen so many trucks on Pacific Highway in NSW dump their garbage all over the side of the road. I'd love to put a CCTV camera outside my fence and catch them as well as speeding over the limit and report it.

reply to post by marsend


Your replies are contradictory to say the least or perhaps
There is a very real problem with some Truck drivers not all but enough to kill a lot of Australian and tourist human beings.
There has recently been a revelation how some Truck drivers have been driving on forged licenses.
I wonder why they would be doing that (think about it).

reply to post by bluemirage5


You are right life is the highest priority by far that is the point of this thread, and why so many Australians wonder why the carnage caused by the reckless, drug taking element in the industry, is allowed to continue.
Iam sure the Police want to stop the carnage as they are the poor souls who have to attend the crash sites along with Ambulance and The Tow Truck drivers.

But for some reason the Police are not allowed.

I recall a few years back we were traveling through Sydney, and, in the CBD trucks are banned, but without fail there was one trying to drive through and was causing havoc.
Also during my time in the military, I found that a lot of the Defence truckies would more often than not attend a lot of crashes, sadly from memory a lot of these were truck related. No I dont have links it just from experience. A

Here is a current example.

news.ninemsn.com.au...

A crash involving multiple vehicles on Sydney’s M4 motorway in Auburn is causing major traffic delays. The crash, which happened at around midday and involved at least two trucks and a car, had closed the motorway in both directions.

reply to post by The_Seeker


Thanks for the input and link, a military trained truck driver is a professional, they keep to the far left in fog for one .

I have had the pleasure of encountering professional truck drivers (they never tailgate) just as a professional car driver will never tailgate a slow moving vehicle in front(there are reasons why people drive slower)...they are entitled to respect as long as they are in the slow lane, or if on a single lane highway.

reply to post by Dr Expired


Yes highly trained and most are very professionals, but there are those that fit into the category of bad drivers as well. Also you would think with their trucks and equipment being so old, that there would be more accidents there, but there are not.
Sadly though a lot of those that had this experience never lasted too much longer in the military, one fellow in particular I recall having to deal with a whole family being killed and trying to save them, but unable to do it, and the horror he saw whilst he was attending, well I am not going to describe here to be honest, as its just terrible. Its amazing what you see on the road when your in Defence and traveling..

Solutions?
A very effective and easy one.
Deploy eight Truck focused Police Vehicles to continually drive in both directions the highway between the Gold Coast and Brisbane( it can be between any two locations where there is high truck usage)...any truck caught tailgating is pulled over and the truck driver arrested.

Any truck driver caught speeding in a heavy vehicle is pulled over and is arrested.

These two deterrents would reduce the road toll overnight by a significant margin.

I would gladly pay a state tax to pay the Police officers wages and petrol money.

It would workout to be less than 50cents per worker in Qld per week.

Twenty four hour wages = 24 drivers per week driving eight hour shifts, some of it static monitoring of the road, all with flashing blue lights .
Three cars driving in one direction three in the opposite direction, two static, then they rotate.
It would cost approx two million dollars a year.
Not bad to save lives and limbs.
That's how easy it could be.
But death prevention no matter what the politicians say is not the priority, it would upset the big trucking magnates.
That's how corrupt Australia really is.

I agree OP, somethings got to be done. I am living in Toowoomba (not for much longer, thankfully) and see it on the warrego hwy between Bris & Tbar. We even get them barreling down the main street up here merging without notice, I've been close to run off the road several times, the traffic, trucks and shocking drivers are one of the reasons we are leaving town. Having been a city kid my whole life I couldn't believe some of the driving on the highways here, and the M1 from Bris to GC I don't like either, or the Bruce, it's just always too dangerous. I get the feeling up here at least that's since the darling down and granite belt provide a lot of meats and farming produce that the trucks think they're untouchable. Between the trucks and the P platers I'm surprised there isn't more accidents!

reply to post by bkaust


You make a very pertinent point about them being "untouchable" it is not the individual truckiewho is untouchable though their lives are never the same when they are charged with manslaughter.

It is the big trucking companies who have the best lawyers who are "untouchable".

They without writing it down coerce the truck drivers to speed so they the company get more profit, they do it by witholding bonuses for drivers not complying with the deadlines.

The truckies life is hard it is lonely, the real blame lies in the lap of those who refuse to enable laws to ensure drivers don't speed or tailgate, or fall asleep and kill entire familys.

It in the future will be exposed as a national disgrace, but for now it is accepted.
And those in power sleep at night soundly.

The OP appears to have been correct in the assertions of the Govt planning to introduce c triples On Australian intercity freeways.www.smh.com.au....
Check out the size of these mega trucks, imagine them swaying side to side, as you are overtaken by them.
Wow what a caring government Australia has the road toll in Australia is approx 30 since the festive holiday season began thats about 5 fatalities per day for the lastsix days, a fair percentage have involved trucks, and the car left the road and hit a tree reports.ie a truck pushed a car off the road and kept going..
OP this is a disgrace.

Near killed twice yesterday, on a NSW country road, both times it was a clown wearing fluros driving in a big ponse mobile made in china, taking a corner to fast on my side of the road and both vehicles had mining stickers on them. So much for trucks being the greatest threat.