ABSTRACT

In the early hours of October 20th, 1989, a semi-trailer carrying canned fruit on Australia’s main east-coast highway between Brisbane and Sydney veered onto the wrong side of the road and collided with a interstate commuter bus at Cowper, 800km north of Sydney. Twenty people were killed. The truck driver (among those killed) was a subcontractor for a large transport company. Viewed by colleagues as a reliable operator, he had been booked for over 29 traffic offenses (mainly speeding) over the previous three years and was found to have a blood ephedrine level many times that of a chronic user. This incident and a bus collision on the same highway less than two weeks later lead to a swathe of new regulatory controls (including new speed limits and speed governors). However, the regulatory response in no way addressed the economic pressures on truck drivers, exacerbated by the subcontracting system, to drive excessive hours, to speed, or to use drug stimulants. Within a short period there was evidence of drivers evading the new controls by, for example, tampering with governors.