S.S.D.

Travelling on the Pacific Highway last night, between Woodburn and Maclean, trucks tried to kill me every five minutes. And I was lucky ! With 32 years of high-speed, night travel on wet roads, having a 35 ton agitated Grim Reaper 5 foot off my rear bumper, was normal. As the trucks finally break clear, passing at 110+kph, I always wonder whatever happened to SSD - safe separtion distance ? And highway patrols at night in unmarked vehicles ? Or undercover investigations into freight companies ? Even just random roadside drug testing ? How many terrorised drivers must die, before it's the Minister's child...?

Comments

[DaveACT]

Divert funding to rail (for route re-alignment) and watch the trucks disappear(gradually) from the highways.

[Jeremy]

Sounds good to me.

Er, was it wise to be taking photographs at the same time?

(We did the Woodburn/Maclean road a couple of weeks ago, I think, on our way to Lennox Head.)

[adrian]

Dave, this is a long mooted proposal - rail to be freight only with passengers on buses. Can't remember why it's never been done though.

Jeremy, I had my passenger hop in the back seat and do the job for me. The speedo shows my roadspeed around 100kph, whilst the transport would be doing around 110kph in the passing lane.

[Chas]

What sort of car are you driving in that picture? Looks like a Toyota Cressida instrument panel to me.

[Yobbo]

Rail is freight only in WA and it doesnt stop trucks killing people. The problem is the roads. All major freight roads need to be dual carriageway so there's no need to tailgate or overtake at high speed.

[Flashman]

Yeah, but the number of truckies on the NSW North Coast who've run off the road on long straight stretches... my grandfather, a former log trucker, says that if you survive falling asleep, you just have to tell the cops that you swerved to miss a cow, or a roo.

The roads up there are getting better, but they're still disgraceful in many places. And at 4am after a 10-hour drive, a truckie gets kind of sloppy...