THE Lucknow Rural Fire Service brigade attended 13 crashes on the Mitchell Highway between Orange and Bathurst last year alone - and that was only on half the length of the road.
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As multi-year safety works continue on the highway, ACM reported this week that Live Traffic data showed there were seven major incidents between Orange and Bathurst in just the past three months.
Lucknow RFS captain Mick Bloomfield, though, said the numbers are much higher because not all crashes become part of an official report.
He has kept diaries of jobs attended and says his brigade has been to 20 car crashes and one truck crash on the highway between Orange and Vittoria in about the past 18 months and went to 13 in 2023 alone - an historically high number for his crew.
Other brigades attend crashes at other locations on the highway, he said.
Crashes between Bathurst and Orange are "happening all the damn time", Mr Bloomfield said.
"There's heaps of them on the road and they're just not reported because no-one gets injured," he said.
The NSW Government has spent years working through safety upgrades - including widening the road and installing safety barriers - on various stages of the highway between Bathurst and Orange as part of a $50 million program.
The latest two stages - at East Guyong and Vittoria East - were completed in December, while work is continuing at the Vittoria Curve section.
Mr Bloomfield said his brigade had been to six incidents in the past two years where "the cars have been sitting on those road barriers", as opposed to ending up in the wrong lane.
"They [the road barriers] are definitely saving head-on crashes, there's no doubt in the world about that," he said.
He said "people are running into barriers now instead of running into each other".
Mr Bloomfield said the highway between Bathurst and Orange was, overall, "pretty safe, in my opinion" and he believed it was driver behaviour that was the main cause of the problems.
"To my opinion, and I've said this several times, putting radar, those speed cameras, all it is is revenue-raising," he said.
"They've got to put more police cars on the road.
"You're driving along the road and you see a police car, you immediately look at your speedo.
"To me, that's the way to stop the road toll."
