One truck driver died and another had to be cut from the wreckage of his car carrier in a head-on collision on Picton Road on Wednesday morning.
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The head-on happened in darkness at 3.40am near the MacArthur Drive intersection.
A Mitsubishi Canter table-top truck and a car carrier collided in the accident, a little over six kilometres from the Hume Motorway intersection.
The cab of the table-top truck was crushed in the collision and the driver, a 39-year-old man died at the scene.
The driver of the car carrier – a 38-year-old man from Smithfield – was trapped in the cabin for 90 minutes.
He suffered a head injury in the crash and, after he was freed from the wreckage, was airlifted to Liverpool Hospital.
As of late on Wednesday, he was in a stable condition according to a spokeswoman from the South Western Sydney Local Health District.
The Canter driver was travelling west towards Picton while the car carrier was headed in the opposite direction towards Wollongong.
After the crash both vehicles ended up on the eastern side of the road.
It was the second fatality on Picton Road in just over a month.
On September 29, Fairy Meadow’s Riana Martelli died when her blue Hyundai Getz left the road and hit a tree.
Not far from the site of Wednesday’s accident is a memorial to another two truck drivers who died in similar circumstances.
At around 5am on March 24 last year Goulburn driver Adrian Ryan and Sydney’s Michael Gorman died when their trucks collided head-on.
Family and friends have set up memorials at the site, Mr Ryan’s included the dashboard gauges and ignition key from his truck, which were found in the grass near the crash site.
The Picton Road crash was the worst of three incidents on Wednesday involving trucks, prompting Traffic and Highway Patrol Chief Inspector Phillip Brooks to hold a media conference.
“These events highlight the risks that are on our road,” Insp Brooks said.
“While there are 190,000 trucks registered in NSW 400,000 pass through our state every day.”
He said there had been 55 deaths in truck crashes this year, 25 fewer than in 2017.