Lynton Grace: Yet another truck barrels through intersection at South-Eastern Freeway. We need ideas and action, now

Cars waiting at the bottom of the South-Eastern Freeway are little more than sitting ducks. After yet another truck disaster, we need bold ideas like this, writes Lynton Grace.

When a runaway sewage truck collided with three cars at the bottom of the freeway in 2014, killing two people and seriously injuring others, there was an immediate reaction.

The speed limit on the downtrack was dropped in the following days to 90km/h, down from 100km/h, and to 60km/h for trucks and buses.

Fast forward to 2022, when another truck smashed into seven cars and a bus – some little more than sitting ducks, stationary at the lights – and nothing else has changed.

Surely, after Sunday afternoon’s traumatic crash, something else has to happen. Enough is enough.

Simple physics tells you this will happen again. You can’t keep putting massive trucks on that descent without a crash that, one day, will be worse than 2014’s horrific smash.

We have to get them off.

Anyone who’s sat in their car at that intersection knows what it’s like to see massive trucks screeching up behind them, the smell of their brakes in the air.

Or to watch trucks turning right on to Portrush Rd, nearly tilting over in their effort to make the green light — which actually happened in 2018.

Hey, you could always read about the 2019 crash, in which a truck that lost its brakes on the downtrack ploughed into six cars and a cyclist at the toll gate – with authorities saying it was a miracle no one died. Sound familiar?

The crash on Sunday was different in that it was the most number of cars and buses I can remember being directly affected in a freeway crash. It also attracted a huge number of people, watching, stunned at the sheer level of chaos.

It’s not like these crashes haven’t spurred a lot of plans and ideas to get trucks off the South-Eastern Freeway. But nothing’s been done – other than change the speed limit.

A northern bypass connecting Murray Bridge with Adelaide’s north was an idea. Others included roads connecting Mount Barker to St Mary’s in Adelaide’s south, or Hope Valley. Another one was an actual tunnel from Cross Rd to Crafers.

August 2014 crash at the bottom of the South-Eastern Freeway – two people were killed and many seriously injured. Picture Roger Wyman.

In 2019, the idea was floated of a sophisticated traffic lights system that can clear the tollgate intersection if a truck’s brakes fail on the way down.

One of the big problems is how cars are forced to wait, like little more than targets, in the path of out-of-control trucks hurtling down the freeway.

Should the tollgate intersection be turned into exit lanes like the freeway uses for Hills towns? Remove the traffic lights completely to allow for free flowing traffic. You’d have a big problem in how to get freeway traffic on to Glen Osmond Rd, obviously – a road bridge could be an option.

That doesn’t get rid of the problem of trucks losing their brakes on the steep descent – the central problem here.

It doesn’t matter if you lower the speed limit for trucks – this will keep happening.

So far, every fix has been a band aid. We need, at the very least, a third arrester bed – no matter how difficult the positioning, and we need it as soon as possible.

Putting aside the traffic chaos and delays, the simple cost of people’s lives – two dead in 2014, and all the injuries since – means something must change. We need ideas. We need the state government to be bold. Without it, cars will keeping sitting at the bottom of the freeway, as trucks lose their brakes and keep smashing into them.

Lynton Grace is a digital news editor and Hills resident.