A 31-YEAR-OLD Cobden man was killed in a horrific head-on collision on the Cobden-Warrnambool Road yesterday morning.
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The man received critical injuries when his Holden Commodore and an unloaded logging truck collided on a sweeping bend on the Cobden-Warrnambool Road at Elingamite, just after 7.30am yesterday.
He was the only occupant of the car, which was headed towards Cobden.
The man’s car came to rest on the eastbound side of the road, its front end crushed to beyond the windscreen.
The truck remained upright but jack-knifed, stopping about 50 metres away on the other side of the road, its prime mover facing the way it had come. Debris was strewn across the road and into a nearby grassed area.
The driver of the car survived the initial impact and paramedics worked for about two hours to stabilise him before he was transferred to a waiting Air Ambulance helicopter, which had landed in a nearby paddock.
A doctor, who was stopped in a long line of trucks and cars on the Warrnambool side of the accident scene, also assisted.
Paramedics worked for a further 30 minutes before the helicopter flew the man to the Warrnambool Base Hospital just before 11am with what an Ambulance Victoria spokesman said were multiple fractures.
A hospital spokeswoman later confirmed the man had died.
The driver of the truck, who was working for a Colac-based company, received minor injuries and was treated at the scene.
The Victoria Police major collision investigation unit from Melbourne travelled to the crash site yesterday afternoon and the road remained closed between Maddens Bridge Road, Glenfyne and Alexanders Road until the early evening.
Emergency service volunteers were visibly upset by the accident, which was attended by the Cobden CFA and SES units, along with Police from Warrnambool, Terang and Cobden.
It’s the third fatality on south-west roads in 10 days. It follows the death of 31-year-old Andrew Blake after a single-vehicle accident on the Great Ocean Road at Nirranda on Sunday and 86-year-old Tony Shanahan of Warrnambool, who died in hospital four days after a collision at Allansford on January 5.
Yesterday’s fatality took the state road toll to 13, five more than the same time last year.
