A man's death on a busy section of rural highway in Western Australia's south west has reignited calls from residents to significantly drop the road's speed limit.
A 29-year-old man died when his ute collided with a large truck being chaperoned by an escort vehicle on the four-lane Bussell Highway on Tuesday.
Police say the crash happened as the truck was turning right across the highway's intersection with Spurr Street, one of three key intersections in a 600-metre stretch leading to the towns of Capel and Peppermint Grove Beach.
Residents have been calling on the government for years to drop the speed limit in the area from 110kph to 80kph after a spate of serious crashes.
Capel Road Safety Action Group member Toni Steinbrenner said 110kph was not an appropriate speed limit.
"I'm absolutely devastated," she said.
"The reason we set up this action group was to prevent exactly this happening."
She said the group had a number of people report near misses.
"It's quite frightening," she said.
Ms Steinbrenner said crossing the busy highway was the only way out of town to access the major regional centres of Bunbury and Busselton.
"It's really not right."
She said an infrastructure upgrade would take time but the speed limit could be reduced to 80km/h as an interim measure.
No speed limit change planned
Main Roads has completed a safety review of the road and told the ABC today it did not recommend the speed limit be changed.
Instead, the review recommended improvements such as line marking, improved signage and intersection improvements.
The work will be completed over the coming months, while Main Roads said longer term intersection improvements would require additional planning and funding.
Bussell Highway is known locally as being a notorious road for vehicle crashes.
A busy and narrow stretch between Busselton and Capel, which is now being upgraded after more than two decades of planning, is known as being particularly unsafe.
The new $1.25 billion Bunbury Outer Ring Road would also feed traffic onto the highway once completed but Main Roads said that would not directly result in traffic volumes increasing.
'It couldn't happen soon enough'
A petition signed by 121 people was lodged last year in WA's parliament by local member James Hayward.
It called for the speed reduction between Capel Drive and Spurr St for the thousands of cars that used the road every day.
"On school holidays and weekends number of vehicles increase dramatically making entering and exiting Capel even more traumatic for residents," the petition reads.
Shire of Capel councillor Rosina Mogg said the community had long called for action.
"I have put motions before council to write letters to the minister. Council actually had a meeting with Main Roads," she said.
The stretch of road had been under traffic management for much of the past year as part of an $85 million upgrade immediately south of Spurr St.
However, the 110kph speed limit was restored soon after the work was completed earlier this year.
