Dangerous roadworks remain

Riders are warned that dangerous “tar snakes” remain on Mt Tamborine this weekend despite causing three motorcycle crashes and one bicycle crash last Saturday.

When TV and local press media arrived for a press conference called on the site today by Motorbike Writer, Main Roads crews were already on the scene photographing and surveying the site.

They wouldn’t say what they were doing except that a call had been received from the Main Roads Minister’s office to inspect the scene following our article yesterday about the dangerous roadworks.

A statement was expected to come from Main Roads Minister Mark Bailey today, but his office now says they will make a statement on Monday.

“The Minister is aware of the issue and has asked TMR to immediately investigate the surface condition of the road,” his office says.

For now, hundreds and possibly thousands of riders will pass the dangerous roadworks this weekend.

One of the crashed riders, primary school principal Lex Bowden, said he was hopeful that the presence of Main Roads workers meant something would be done about the roadworks.

“What happened today may just have save the life of a father or mother,” says Lex whose Hayabusa skidded off the road and down a steep embankment.

The tar snakes, or liquid tar crack sealant, are on a hairpin corner of Mt Tamborine Rd, about 1.5km north of the Canungra turnoff.

A recent Austroads report says crack sealant has low skid resistance and may be more dangerous to motorcyclists than the cracks themselves.

Motorbike Writer inspected the site today and saw the tar snake Lex hit and the marks left by his tyre followed by the scrape marks of the bike.

He was on the inside of the corner, apexing exactly where he should. There is an imprint of his front tyre in the slippery tar which probably also had some morning dew on it. The bike immediately went down, leaving scratch marks on the road to the point it wen over the cliff edge.

From the entry point of the corner you can see the whole road, but because the tar snakes are in shade, it is impossible to see them until you are almost on them.

Opposition Road Safety Minister Andrew Powell said the Minister should “have a conversation with motorcyclists about a stretch of road that claims too many Queensland lives”.

“The LNP has a strong track of working with motorcyclists – for example, delivering the new lane-filtering rules – and we are keen to continue that relationship in the interests of improving road safety.”

The Motorcycle Riders’ Association of Queensland has described the Mt Tamborine patch-up repair job as “careless”.

“The long crack repairs are a problem but more so the large area repairs that have been done with the liquid tar fill because they now make a greater single area of low traction which will cause a two wheel vehicle to loose control,” an MRAQ statement says.

“This system of road maintenance is a low-cost one aimed solely at preventing water entry into the road surface which could cause further deterioration.

“However little or no consideration of vulnerable road users appears to be taken into consideration when this type of repair is done and in this particular instance the repair type appears to have been done in excess of any reasonable limit.”

The statement says Main Roads is using high-traction aggregate mixtures to resurface other roads with tight corners such as the M1 turn-off to the Gateway.

“Unfortunately it appears only to be used on higher-volume road surfaces,” the MRAQ says.

“Consideration of the traction quality of the road surface and in particular when performing any repairs must be part of the final solution mix and the MRAQ calls upon all levels of government and road construction contractors to have much greater consideration of the whole vehicle fleet that use our roads when formulating any program of road repair or construction.”

The MRAQ also expressed concern about “excessively large areas of road profiling left unfinished when resealing or resurfacing is being performed” and loose material left behind after road repairs.

“A greater duty of care needs to be considered by all those concerned with the building and repair of Queensland roads,” the MRAQ says.