An unlucky caravan owner who come unstuck at the Marius Street bridge on Thursday wasn't the first victim of one of Tamworth's most accident-prone roads.
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Road crash data collected by the state government's Centre for Road Safety show Marius Street is one of the most common places in the city for car crashes.
The latest statistics - from 2014 to 2018 - show nine drivers came unstuck on Marius Street, including at two intersections. There were three serious car crashes around the intersection of Marius and Brisbane streets, which left three people seriously injured.
Two people were seriously injured in accidents at the Marius and Peel Street intersection.
But the section before and after Nemingha is among the most common site of accidents in Tamworth. The Armidale Road section of the New England Highway has claimed ten cars.
Duri Road is the most dangerous road in the Local Government Area (LGA). Six lives have been lost in five fatal accidents there, which turns into Werris Creek Road. There were also seven accidents causing serious injury.
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Another person was killed in an accident just before the Robert Street intersection with Duri Road in 2018. Including that fatal, the road claimed nearly one-quarter of the 29 drivers killed in the LGA.
Werris Creek Road was labelled the third worst stretch of road in the New England in the NRMA's Rate Your Road Survey last year, and users have started a Facebook page titled 'Fix Werris Creek Road' to lobby an upgrade.
The New England Highway is the most deadly road in Tamworth's LGA, with eight people killed in accidents. State government statistics show 257 people were seriously injured in 286 car accidents in the Tamworth LGA from 2014 to 2018.
An additional 475 people were moderately injured in a car accident in the same period.
Yet NSW roads have never been safer. There were just 4.99 road deaths per 100,000 residents of NSW in 2017, down from a high of 28.9 in 1970.
Statistics are based on information from NSW Health, the State Insurance Regulatory Authority, Insurance and Care NSW and the NSW Police. They do not include crashes without injury.
Andrew Messenger
Politics, environment and energy journalist at the Northern Daily Leader. I also write about health, bushfires and occasionally music. I'm a Brisbane boy by way of Charleville and Hobart who now lives in in beautiful New England. Get me at andrew.messenger@austcommunitymedia.com.au
Politics, environment and energy journalist at the Northern Daily Leader. I also write about health, bushfires and occasionally music. I'm a Brisbane boy by way of Charleville and Hobart who now lives in in beautiful New England. Get me at andrew.messenger@austcommunitymedia.com.au
