Truck drivers will be waved through border checkpoints where risky queues form

Border checkpoints are back – but new rules have been put in place after a truck driver died crashing into a queue of vehicles earlier this year.

Entry to South Australia from Victoria is now limited to eight roads with checkpoints reinstated on the key routes as border restrictions return.

SA Road Transport Association executive officer Steve Shearer said changes were a direct response to the death of a man in a truck crash in a queue at the Bordertown checkpoint caused by a snap closure in February.

“Even though all the truckies knew or should have known that it was there, we had a truck driver drive into the rear of that queue and most of us shake our heads wondering how the hell that happened,” he said.

A man died in a fiery three truck crash on the Western Highway at Serviceton in February. Picture: Channel 7

“We can’t blame the police for that because the truck drivers have to get their job right.”

Mr Shearer said he felt the industry’s advice had been considered with authorities now granted the power to exempt trucks and SA and Victoria police committed to working together if queues crossed border lines.

“That incident really highlighted the need for the cross border liaison between police departments,” he said.

“It is not always easy to get police departments in different jurisdictions to work cooperatively together, which I’ve always found pretty extraordinary because they should all have one common objective, which is to catch the bad guys.

SA Road Transport Association executive director Steve Shearer.

“The policy they’ve adopted now is if the queues start becoming a risk issue and getting too long, they will just wave the trucks through.”

Despite more than a million border crossings into SA in the past year, not a single case of Covid-19 was brought into the state by truck drivers according to Mr Shearer, who said the next issue was ensuring officers on the ground enforce the new policies.

“The evidence is very, very clear that we’re extremely low risk,” he said.

“The greatest risk is from Joe Citizen who doesn’t have all the practices and procedures in place that truck drivers and companies have.”

He had stern words for anyone considering entering the state via other roads.

“People who wantonly breach these Covid border controls really are selfish pricks because they’re doing it for their own selfish reasons, with total disregard for the community and the economy and they deserve to be absolutely shamed,” he said.

Due to the risk of border closures the association had been advising drivers to keep up their testing regimes and Mr Shearer said it was in talks with health officials about the introduction of saliva testing moving forward.

“The trade off is likely to be that if you want to have saliva testing instead of nasal swab, you have to do it every day and that might be impractical for most truck drivers,” he said.