Two people die in two hours on SA roads – one at Kudla and another at Hindmarsh Valley
SA motorists seem to have a total “lack of concern and empathy” over the spiralling road toll, senior police say, who are at their wits’ end after six dead in five days.
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- Two people killed in northern crashes
- Second person dies in horror Port Wakefield crash
- Learner rider, 16, dies after Pooraka motorbike crash
South Australian motorists are showing a dangerous “lack of concern and empathy”, according to senior police, who are at their wits’ end over the spiralling road toll after six deaths in the past five days.
As this year’s road toll approaches the grim 100-death milestone, shocked authorities have questioned how the public are failing to change their driving habits.
“If six people got murdered in the state of South Australia in the last five days, can you imagine the community outrage,” said the state’s top road cop Superintendent Bob Gray.
“Yet there seems to be this total lack of concern and empathy within South Australia.”
His emotional intervention came in the wake of six deaths since last Thursday, which involved a range of different vehicles across the state.
In the latest incidents on Monday, a driver perished in a fiery crash after their car slammed into a tree at Hindmarsh Valley.
The incident occurred on Nettle Hill Rd, north of Victor Harbor, just before 5am. A forensic expert collected evidence that will be used to identify the driver, believed to be a woman aged in her 40s.
Then a short time later in Adelaide’s north, a car crashed into a tree on Dalkeith Rd near Stebonheath Rd at Kudla, just south of Gawler. The male driver died at the scene about 7am.
Supt Gray, officer in charge of Traffic Support Branch, said the mounting crisis was “frustrating beyond belief”.
“I’ve pleaded with people to change their behaviour,” he said.
“People don’t appreciate the carnage that lies behind, and the toll that lies behind, these deaths.
“Some people never recover from this. I’m sure there’s Christmas presents wrapped up under Christmas trees that won’t be opened by their intended recipients this year.”
Monday’s fatalities follow a horror weekend on SA roads.
A 16-year-old L-plate motorcycle rider slid twenty metres in a crash on Maxwell Rd, Pooraka on Saturday. He died in hospital on Sunday.
Police have spoken to a second rider who was travelling west on Maxwell Rd on a blue Kawasaki motorcycle at the time of the crash.
As a memorial grew for the teenager on Monday at the crash site, Parafield Gardens High School Year 11 student Jordan O’Connell was mourning the loss of her friend.
“He was smart, he was kind, he was everything,” she said. “He didn’t deserve this. He was everyone’s best friend.”
On Sunday, a man crashed into a tree on Gammon Ranges Rd, Nepabunna, in the state’s far north just before 11am.
Separately, an elderly man died on Sunday morning, three days after the car he was travelling in was hit by a truck at the notorious Port Wakefield intersection of the Copper Coast and Augusta highways.
The road toll now sits at 96, compared with 63 at the same time last year.