Title : 'Catastrophic crash waiting to happen': Driver of 53-metre road train allegedly high on ice
link : 'Catastrophic crash waiting to happen': Driver of 53-metre road train allegedly high on ice
'Catastrophic crash waiting to happen': Driver of 53-metre road train allegedly high on ice
A truckie who was allegedly high on ice when he was pulled over by police for driving his three-trailer, 53-metre-long road train erratically on the Stuart Highway has been slammed for "besmirching the reputation of the entire industry".
Key points:
- The NT Road Transport Association said the industry needed "to be held at a higher standard"
- The NT RTA's executive officer said the Territory's trucking employers did not push their employees to deliver under unreasonable deadlines
- The incident was one of a multiple offences in the NT over the past few days, which included numerous drink-driving charges
The 30-year-old driver had his vehicle seized, along with drug paraphernalia found inside his truck, when he was pulled over for a random drug test 80 kilometres north of the outback town of Tennant Creek on Friday.
A police statement said patrolling officers saw "a road train with three trailers driving in a questionable manner, swerving onto the dirt verge and across the centre line several times for no apparent reason".
The driver was issued a court notice, charged with a number of driving offences and had his licence immediately suspended for 24 hours.
The NT Road Transport Association (NT RTA) said the allegations, if proven, showed the industry needed "to be held at a higher standard".
"Our road conditions and our environment and our geography means that every single employer just emphasises 'just get there when you get there', essentially, and 'just pull over when you're tired'," NT RTA executive officer Louise Bilato said.
"The attitude that may be put out there that people have these extreme deadlines, [with] employers standing over them with a stick insisting that they arrive at particular times and they have to stay awake for an extended period — that's old hat."
She said the industry took such instances "very, very seriously" and that the safety risk the alleged offence had posed to the general public was "not acceptable".
Drink-drivers nabbed across Territory
The truckie's arrest was just one of a number of criminal charges laid over the past few days in the Northern Territory, which included drink-driving charges in Katherine, Parap, Palmerston and Alice Springs.
The highest of these was .208 in the Red Centre.
There was also a major crash that involved a car that had been travelling east on the Plenty Highway, carrying four people who had not been wearing seatbelts, and were thrown from the vehicle when it crashed, according to police.
In Mataranka on Sunday, a troop carrier was stopped by police after it was spotted with a "large plume of black smoke" billowing out of its engine.
The vehicle had no windscreens, only one side window, and after an inspection police discovered it had been a statutory write-off since 2004.
The driver returned a positive blood alcohol reading and was arrested.
'We should not accept this': NT Police
Sergeant Conan Robertson of the Southern Traffic Operations Unit said the majority of Territory lives were continuing to be lost on regional and remote roads.
"We are breath and drug testing drivers at random operating cars, motorcycles, trucks and road trains throughout the Northern Territory, including people who think they are safely in the middle of nowhere," he said.
"Anyone can see that a driver under the influence in a 50-plus-metre truck pulling three trailers is a catastrophic crash waiting to happen.
"Imagine being on the road and finding yourself in the path of this disaster.
"As a community we should not accept drink or drug driving; it has already cost us too much."
There were 50 deaths on Territory roads last year, making it a rate four times higher, per capita, than any other state or territory in Australia.
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