The Bruce Highway is back open after a fiery crash damaged the road at Bororen last week – but it continues to be a hot-button topic.
Friday’s fatal incident was just one in a long list of recent accidents on the road, which has drawn nationwide attention to the state of the highway.
We took to the popular On The Pads Queensland Facebook group to ask truckies what they think are the biggest safety issues on the Bruce, and how we can fix them.
Here’s what a few of you had to say.
Michael Stover
The only decent part of the road past Gympie is the stretch between Maryborough and Howard. The rest of it is absolute trash. The government should be charged with manslaughter for a lot of these accidents.
John McKenzie
The whole highway needs to be fixed. They need to take a page out of NSW’s book and make a new four-lane highway that has a concrete wall separating north and southbound traffic.
Warwick Stiller
Being realistic, no government – either state or federal – have the funds to fix it, but a lot of the work done over the years is of poor quality. At the end of the day, there needs to be a long-term plan to commit funds for the next 20-odd years, to actually upgrade section by section. From Townsville north is still a long way behind the rest.
While you have poor roads you’ll continue to have a percentage of drivers crash – that’s just a fact of life. Impatience is a hard problem to fix and experience can’t be taught. We all have done stupid things – some just don’t get away with it. The transport industry is slowly declining and as the more experienced retire and go the problem will get worse.
Perhaps those that get their license need to have distance restrictions for the first 18 months until they gain enough experience on short haul and they move to long haul. Cars and caravans? Well, there’s no political will to change them.
Brad Orton
My main concern between Gin Gin and Miriam Vale is burn-off smoke. I know the farmers have to burn off, but this combined with the fog makes visibility almost zero.
I don’t have too much problem with the road otherwise, because I’ve driven on way worse.
Matt Byrnes
The biggest problem is 30 years of failure from state and federal governments. The like-for-like funding rule for rebuilding after a natural disaster has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars.
Jason Sexton
Time to align with the southern states. With all the resources that are being exported to the rest of the world, which needs proper infrastructure, I think there is enough in the coffers to achieve this. Make it a ten-year program, which will provide jobs for the communities along the way, as well as getting major heavy traffic out of these towns. It would also open up tourism to these local communities, because the average Joe will want to travel on a beautiful dual carriageway, not some outdated goat track. Everyone knows it needs doing, people have been asking for decades. Now we are being scolded for our driving habits, when the condition of the road is clearly making impatient people do stupid shit. If we had something like the Pacific Highway, the situation would be completely different. It needs to be done.
Trevor Henning
How about stop blaming the highway and address the driver attitude, as it is 99 per cent of the problem?
Mick De Groot
Dual lanes from Gympie to Cairns. If they can do it from Melbourne to Sydney then on to Queensland, then why not from Brisbane to North?
For more comments and the latest on the Bruce Highway crisis, pick up the next issue of Big Rigs – on shelves September 13.
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