Tradies have been urged to lock down their loads as CCTV footage of building materials flying off the back of utes and trucks is released.
One worker can be seen on the footage crossing a three-lane highway to retrieve a piece of sheet metal, before dragging it back to his truck through oncoming traffic.
Another clip shows a roll of carpets flying off the front of a truck before response teams arrived.
National transport body Transurban said there had been more than 1500 lost load incidents across Sydney motorways in the last year, with the M2 seeing 359, followed by 338 on the M5 South-West and 332 on the M4.
The M5 East had over 220 incidents, with the M8, Northconnex and Eastern Distributor all seeing more than 100 each.
“These incidents are happening more than we’d like,” Roads Minister John Graham said.
“There’s tough penalties in place but really, we’re calling for common sense here.
“Some of these examples are shocking, we’ve seen a flying carpet on the motorway, in other examples we’ve seen people marching across the road with debris.”
Trasurban said tradies should be cautious when securing their loads and refrain from trying to collect lost supplies if they do happen to fall off.
“Lost loads can be very dangerous, they can lead to accidents, incidents and they certainly lead to congestion on the network,” Transurban spokesperson Domenico De Conti said.
“Don’t stop in the middle of the motorway and certainly don’t get out of the vehicle.
“We have control rooms that monitor 24 hours a day, seven days a week, we will dispatch an incident response crew.
“The bulk of tradies and construction workers all do the right thing.”
Tradies found not doing the right thing will be hit with a $500 fine.
