Truck crashes into stationary vehicles leaving two dead and another 10 injured
NSW police’s accident investigation unit is carrying out probes following a multi-vehicle crash near Dubbo on Tuesday.
Two people died while another 10 were injured as a result of the crash.
The accident occurred when a semi-trailer hit a line of stationary vehicles that had queued up at a roadworks site on Newell Highway, about 20 kilometres north of Dubbo.
The queued vehicles included a B-double and four cars.
Emergency services were called to the location at around 12.30pm.
With investigations underway, the police is reported to have said it could take “days” to ascertain the position of each vehicle due to the carnage following the crash.
NSW roads minister Melinda Pavey described the accident as an “absolute horror”.
“We had one of our workers collapse with shock, who was working on that site,” Pavey said.
“There are innocent people caught up in this.”
The incident has led the Transport Workers’ Union (TWU) to renew its call for an “independent road safety watchdog”.
TWU national secretary Tony Sheldon has called on the federal government, the trucking community and the peak trucking body, Australian Trucking Association (ATA), to find a sustainable solution to the issue of road safety.
A comment from the Roads and Maritime Services (RMS) has been sought as to the next steps following the incident.
Meanwhile, Redstar Transport found itself unwittingly linked with the story without being involved in the incident.
A news report published by Channel 7 used an old photo of a Redstar truck on its news website, which was later picked up by News.com.au.
Clarifying Redstar’s non-involvement with the case, MD Sean Williams tells ATN: “Channel 7 very kindly chose to make reference to an incident in May last year (including the use of historical footage of out PM) in its coverage of the accident last night on the basis that it occurred on the same stretch of highway. News.com.au then took the liberty of showing the picture of that PM in its coverage quoting Channel 7 as the source and using the caption ‘Vision of a truck believed to be involved in a fatal collision near Dubbo’ – which is quite misleading. I note that both organisations have since removed this photo from their website.”