South-west police are attending a truck crash every eight days

It's a worrying trend prompting the region's road chief to issue an urgent message to drivers to be aware and avoid taking risks.

South-west road safety adviser Senior Sergeant Matt Wheeler said concerningly there'd been about 30 collisions involving trucks since January 1.

Of those collisions, 31 per cent resulted in serious injuries and 10 per cent involved lives being lost.

In 42 per cent of the collisions the truck driver was at fault and police laid charges including careless driving, impaired driving, failing to give way and failing to leave sufficient distance when following another vehicle.

Senior Sergeant Wheeler said more than half of the incidents occurred in daylight hours.

Last month The Standard reported a 47-year-old Warrnambool man was injured after a truck carrying hay bales rolled on Wangoom's Hopkins Falls Road about 4pm.

It came after a 31-year-old Melbourne driver lost control of a Coles supermarket prime mover and semi-trailer and T-boned a Suzuki near Allansford at 6.30am.

And in May emergency services attended three serious truck crashes in one week, including a fiery three-truck crash east of Skipton which killed one man and injured two others.

Less than an hour later, two Western Star trucks collided in Drumborg, resulting in a large spill of woodchips.

Following that a 60-year-old male driver suffered upper body injuries after he rolled a B-double milk tanker on Penshurst-Warrnambool Road at Warrong.

In February an 80-year-old Warrnambool cyclist died after he was hit by a truck in Wangoom.

And in March an 87-year-old Cobden district man was killed after he failed to give way at the intersection of the Cobden-Warrnambool Road and Curdies-Leitchfield Road and collided with a milk tanker.

Senior Sergeant Wheeler said reducing road trauma was everyone's responsibility and truck drivers needed to avoid taking risks just as much as motorists needed to drive safely around heavy vehicles.

"A B-double truck can weigh 60 to 70 tonnes so if a driver falls asleep or loses control, or a car driver fails to give way, that truck is going to cause significant trauma or damage to whatever it hits," he said.

"And history shows us that when these heavy vehicles are involved in a collision, they can result in multiple fatalities, not just one."

Senior Sergeant Wheeler said the region's highway patrol units were taking policing in the heavy vehicle industry "really serious".

"We dedicate at least a shift a week just to heavy vehicle enforcement, so we're out there looking for drug use and fatigue, checking log books and speed," he said.

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