Wagga resident Barry Wooden reflects on losing his son Kyle at the Bells Road Crossing accident off the Olympic Highway, near Gerogery, NSW, along with Kyle's friends Luke Milne, Cameron Tucker, Graham Kelly and Ben Wilkins on January 27, 2001.
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00:00This is a level crossing where my son and four of his friends were killed, which rode
00:07in on one weekend in 2001.
00:12It's a notorious level crossing, it's always been a notorious level crossing, had the highest
00:18accident rate of any level crossing in New South Wales.
00:22It's the only piece of rail and road where a train can go over a level crossing at 160
00:31kilometres an hour across a major highway.
00:33That's an open level crossing with no boom gates.
00:36The biggest belief that a crossing like this was allowed to sit here for decades, now it's
00:41suddenly being double operated.
00:44The RTA had many plans in action to replace the crossing with an overbridge, but because
00:51of the fact that even though it had the worst accident rate of any crossing in New South
00:56Wales, nobody had ever been killed here.
00:58That was the reasoning behind their refusal to do anything with the crossing.
01:06Fast forward to 2001, five fine young men lost their lives here by a sudden amount of
01:17fire.
01:18Five families have been bereaved ever since because of the loss of their, in most cases,
01:26their only sons.
01:29It's been 23 years of anger.
01:33I'm sick of being angry, I want something done about level crossings.
01:38I want the crossings fixed, I want the trains lit up.
01:42It's as simple as that.
01:43I'm tired of being angry, just do something.
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