It was a harrowing moment Glen Linklater will never forget. On a highway in Western Australia's Wheatbelt, the truckie was first to arrive at a shocking scene — a motorcyclist had collided with a kangaroo moments before.
The rider "wasn't good — he was not good at all", Mr Linklater said of the incident a few weeks ago.
Mr Linklater rang triple-0, but the men were on a country road a long way from help.
After what felt like an eternity to Mr Linklater, an ambulance arrived.
"There wasn't really a lot that we could do for him. He was too far gone," Mr Linklater said.
"We tried CPR ... but it just didn't work.
"He passed away, the poor fella."
In 26 years of commercial driving, it was the first time Northam-based Mr Linklater had been first to arrive at a road accident that would become a fatality.
"If I was better prepared, maybe it could have been a different outcome. I don't know," he said.
"I don't know if we could have done more. How do you know? You don't know."
'You never know what's around the corner'
Unfortunately, Mr Linklater is not alone in feeling ill-equipped to help injured people when the first to arrive at a crash scene.
"It rings the same tune with all of them, really — you feel pretty helpless," he said of other truck drivers and their experiences.
Truck driver Glenn Kendall, from Katanning WA, has also been in the industry for 26 years and said each time he got in his cab the thought of arriving moments after a crash crossed his mind.
"You never quite know what's around the corner," he said.
Mr Kendall said it was a strange feeling when a normal day at work suddenly became a fight to save a stranger's life.
"You probably don't even [get to] know their name," he said.
"It all happens really really quickly.
"I always drive past this section where there was an accident and I often think, I wonder what happened to that lady and if she was all right."
A 2020 survey by the Northern Territory road transport association revealed 80 per cent of truck drivers continued their journey after stopping at the scene of an accident and only one in five told their employers what had happened.
David Fyfe, who owns a trucking business in Lake Grace four hours south-east of Perth, is president of WA's Livestock and Rural Transport Association. He knows the toll accidents take on drivers.
"Too often people will close down for a little while [and] with some people it's really hard to find out how they're feeling," he said.
"We still are living a little bit in a society of people where they say, 'We're OK mate'."
Mr Fyfe said better training and more support should be available.
"Drivers sometimes may even know the person," he said.
"You can imagine there are some fairly horrific and gruesome scenes to approach and not many heavy vehicle drivers are trained to handle this."
Training on the horizon
This year a parliamentary inquiry recommended the federal government work with states and territories to support first-response training for truck drivers.
WA Trucking Association chief executive Cam Dumesny hopes it will be based on a module already under trial in WA and the Northern Territory.
"The reality when you come across trauma is you've got screams, you've got noise, you've got dust, you've got blood," he said.
"It's confronting.
"That part of it is what we are trying to deal with — [to] try to make that training as realistic as possible because it better prepares them to deal with the moments when somebody is relying on them to save their life."
Assistant federal Infrastructure Minister Carol Brown said recommendations from the inquiry were being considered as part of the development of a new road safety action plan expected to be made public early next year.
