'Car drivers to blame' for M1 Princes Motorway accidents: resident

Around 8:30am a truck with semitrailer attached hit a tree then rolled near the New Mount Pleasant Road overpass, losing its cargo of circus equipment and blocking all lanes.

The 36-year-old driver managed to escape the overturned vehicle relatively unscathed. 

Traffic eventually returned to normal by 1pm.

It comes after two other truck accidents each closed at least one direction of the M1 at Mount Ousley late last year.

Local James Ellison, 53, lives on the other side of the noise barrier and blamed the accidents on car drivers for weaving in and out of traffic.

“They don’t appreciate how heavy the trucks are and how hard it is for them to stop so they weave in and out, and want to get around them,” he said.

“The trucks coming down the road don’t mix very well with the cars.”

He said he was often hearing and seeing multi-vehicle accidents at least once a fortnight a little further down from Monday’s crash site, as well as regularly hearing the “screeching” of truck brakes.

“One car will run up the back of another and another one, there’s usually five of them going bang, bang, bang bang,” Mr Ellison said.

“They’re cars trying to get out of the way from slow moving trucks, they go racing down around the bend and can’t see what’s ahead.”

Mr Ellison said he’s concerned it will take a serious fatality before authorities will do something.

Witness Amy Sagar said the truck driver was a “bloody hero” and thanked him for slowing to stop a bigger pile-up.

“[He] used his truck to slow down all the traffic on Mt Ousley so that we didn't pile up on the stand still traffic around the bend,” she wrote on the Illawarra Mercury Facebook page.

Wollongong Acting Inspector Charlie Hutchins said in response to Mr Ellison’s concerns: “Any bad driver is a concern for us”.

Police investigations into the accident are continuing.