Council Fails to Repair Highway in Australia due to "Human Error", 5 Died

Sometimes innocent people die because of authorities' negligence and the tragic part is that it's extremely difficult to find someone to take the blame for the error.

Thus, the New South Wales Council failed to fix a section of the Old Pacific Highway long time before it collapsed, resulting in the death of five innocent people, drive.com.au has reported.

In June 2007, a culvert on the highway near Somersby collapsed and swallowed part of the highway causing the deaths of Adam Holt, his partner Roslyn Bragg, age 29, their young daughters Jasmine, age 3, and Madison, age 2, and Ms Bragg's nephew Travis, age 9.

But  problems with the section of the highway had first been noticed in 2002, says a report made by Local Government Minister Barbara Perry. Gosford City Council is the authority responsible for the failed section of the highway but details about the problems with the culvert were never entered into the council's electronic records.

Although an inspection of the culvert in 2003 demanded immediate repair, the problems were not still entered into the record management system and therefore, no one took any action to solve the problem.

"The fact that both the December 2003 email highlighting the problems ... and the resulting quotation were not entered ... remains unexplained, with human error the most likely factor," the report said.

Of course, everybody makes mistakes but this "human error" led to the death of five innocent people. This accident could have been avoided provided that the authorities had been more attentive. A "human error" is not quite the perfect excuse for authorities' negligence. Let's not forget that it was the road safety at stake. So, humans makes mistakes and that's it?