[Keepleft]

Originally Posted by RAPID XR8

After twenty years and some 3miilion k's driving trucks around Australia. Nothing surprises me much anymore as to how and why accidents happen on the highways.

Right!


The one thing that I do know is that it is always driver error as far as the police and the governments are concerned.

On *rare* occasions other factors play a part, including road environment, speaking of personal coronial and investigative experience here.


But after seeing the accident site om the M7 in Sydney today it just confirms that the design of the barricades, both the cable and the concrete one played a part also.

Right, glad to see a secondment.


Any vehicle, not just a 4X4 would have had the same outcome, as the vehicle would have hit the cable at the same time as the concrete.Then rode up the concrete barrier causing it to roll.

Not necessarily so sir, but the suggestion is certainly quite possible, many factors come into play here, speed, make of vehicle, number of persons etc and so on. Crashes are by nature multi-factoral.


But the design of this will probably never be brought up as lack of road maintanence and badly built roads never are.

Absolutely not so these days. The High Court overturned, rightly, the old Highway rule in year 2000 which 'prevented' people from taking legal action against the State for negligence, where that can be proven. To do this it helps to get hold of Council and RTA Maintenance Schedules/Records for a subject road. There are many issues in this and CONTRIBUTORY negligence on part of the driver plays into being- so as to reduce any payout.

The road user is still certainly responsible.

Cause there would be law suits flying all over the place against the government and the private road builders.

Yes, it happens, increasingly so. Sometimes justly. You can also sue on the basis of 'Nervous Shock' where a family member dies as a result of negligence on actions of another.

I just think it is about time they started looking at other causes of accidents other than "driver error".

This is happening, make no mistake lessons will come from this particular event, once those lessons are realised, that will globally effect existing and future road design guidelines/standards at barrier treatments.

It is true however, that the State does want people to take greater responsibility for their driving. Merely thinking one is a 'safe' driver because they only do the speed limit will not cut-it in litigation (or police enforcement) if the driver is in some driving manner found otherwise negligent in his or her driving or following a crash.

I do know where your coming from, I am here to tell you, having been on topic today with personnel involved, that things do improve with tragic events.

What annoys me is the 'obvious' and cheap improvements on a roadway that can be made and are often carried out after crashes. I will say the M7 Consortium have done a superb job though, this is the only Australian motorway with full length median barrier. More will be done.

The cost of an Australian fatality exceeds well over 1 million dollars now (BTRE). You can buy a wire rope barrier for $35 per linnear metre suppy, even less for longer orders.

The lack of full length median barrier on NSW and indeed Aussie freeways, even where the median extends to 15 metres is a serious issue in negligence in my view. As the UK Highway's Agency advise: "Even where we get a median seperation of 100 metres, we will always use median barrier, typically brifen, as even at 100 metres we have had trucks unable to stop prior to the barrier".

IF anybody here ever suffers family tragedy owing a crossover crash, do seek legal redress so that action might be made to prevent same in the future for some other hapless victim of poor, second rate US-leaning road design.