A spate of recent truck crashes – including three collisions on Mount Ousley Road in the past five weeks – should serve as a wake-up call for an industry plagued by inadequate driver training and unsafe pay-by-the-load practices that encourage speeding, the Transport Workers Union says.
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The union’s state secretary, Richard Olsen, said a spike in construction work over the past 12 months had led to a greater number of “mud carters” on NSW roads, including sometimes inexperienced drivers who were taking on unfamiliar routes.
“They do have license requirements, but the question is: for how long have they had them? And what sort of training have they had?” Mr Olsen said.
“There have been quite a few incidents over the past few months.
“We say it’s because there’s not enough scrutiny on the safe driving plan, and it also goes to the method of payment.
“We have a lot of trouble in the construction industry with load payments, rather than drivers being paid by the hour.
“It makes drivers want to do more than they should, and then we end up with incidents such as these.”
The Illawarra’s road network was thrown into chaos on Monday when a truck flipped on the M1 near the base of Mount Ousley, covering the roadway in soil.
The road was closed again the next day when a truck – since issued 24 defect notices – overturned in a near-identical location.
This followed a truck crash on the M1 at Cataract that caused the closure of the southbound lanes for four hours a month earlier
NSW Police manned the southbound lanes of the M1 throughout Thursday, carrying out a large number of checks on trucks heading down the mountain.
A driver and their employer are supposed to agree on a ‘safe driving plan’ ahead of each journey, setting out the intended route and rest stop. The plan could take the form of a five minute conversation between the driver and a company’s risk manager, Mr Olsen said.
“It would involve the employer saying, ‘watch out when you get to the top of that hill, the speed limit is x, you should stay in the lefthand lane, do not attempt to overtake’,” he said.
“It’s a very quick conversation, and if that person has only done it [the route] once or twice or not at all, that is putting the public at risk.
“Mount Ousley is a very dangerous place; it’s not something you put a learner on. Drivers need to be given training on how to master that hill both ways, because if you’re not careful, if you haven’t got control of your vehicle, it can easily sip away from you.”
“There’s virtually no room for error.”
