Drivers left stranded after massive crater causes multiple tyre blowouts near Seymour
Rachel Welsh’s car, full of five teenagers, was driving on the Hume Highway when she felt a huge jolt and got a flat tyre.
“I’ve never encountered a hole like this in my life,” Welsh said about the crater, which he estimated was three meters wide and stretched across the entire left lane.
Stuck in the back of a lorry, the St Kilda East mother saw the pothole but was unable to avoid the collision.
“I was pinned in the box… That’s why I went into the hole,” he said.
Welsh pulled his Mercedes V250d to the side of the road just north of Seymour and wasn’t alone for long.
“A person pulled over behind us changed his tire and continued on the road, then another person came [motorist] Right after that he pulled in front of us and a van came up behind us, they all had flat tires,” Welsh said.
Welsh called police after seeing a fourth vehicle pull over: “There was going to be an accident.”
Police quickly closed the road and the pothole was repaired without any serious injuries.
For the second time this week, Hume drivers encountered potholes large enough to cause tire damage.
On Tuesday, local MP Annabelle Cleeland warned her community that a pothole had damaged the tires of about six vehicles heading north on the highway near the Tallarook turnoff south of Seymour.
Further west, another opposition MP, Wendy Lovell, said she had “received reports of motorists feeling unsafe avoiding several significant potholes on the Calder Highway around the Taradale area”, made worse by heavy rain.
Performance measures in the May state budget set a target of patching 74,000 square meters of roads in regional Victoria in 2026-27; This figure corresponds to 95,000 square meters expected to be completed in the fiscal year just ended.
Patching, which involves filling and compacting potholes and cracks with bitumen mixtures to ensure a rapid improvement in road quality, has been criticized as a short-term measure.
The Ministry of Transport and Planning said it was now focusing more on longer-term treatments such as resurfacing.
Budget documents show 2.7 square kilometers of road space outside Melbourne is planned to be repaved or rehabilitated in 2026-27.
Welsh said he was shaken by the mishap and “didn’t even want to think” about how much the repairs would cost.
“As parents, you have to keep things light, right?” he said. “They’ll be fine, it’s an adventure for them.”
Welsh had his car towed to Seymour and his tire changed before continuing his journey to visit his mother in New South Wales.
In Victoria, the Department of Transport and Planning is responsible for any damage to vehicles caused by the roads it maintains, provided the cost of the damage is more than $1681.
People can stay incident reporting and claim If they think the government is responsible, they fill out the forms, and if they disagree with the resulting assessment, they can request a review.
Last June, a section of the Princes Highway near Werribee damaged four cars and a truck when a metal plate came loose and exposed road spikes underneath Melbourne-bound vehicles in the morning hours.
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