Harrowing details have emerged about a station wagon travelling on the wrong side of highway before it crashed head-on into a taxi, claiming four lives.
Emergency services rushed to Leach Highway in Cloverdale near Perth Airport, at about 3.40am on Monday following reports of a head-on collision, causing the Toyota RAV4 to burst into flames.
Both the Toyota RAV4 motorist and the taxi driver, 58, died at the scene.
A mother and daughter in the back seat of the taxi, aged 56 and 81, also lost their lives.
Police have revealed the Toyota RAV4 driver made a ‘conscious decision’ to drive on the wrong side of the highway, which is laned and separated by a centre wall.
Detective Senior Sergeant Hugh Le Tessier said at a press conference on Monday afternoon that there was evidence the man had driven erratically through nearby suburbs before entering the highway by going the wrong way down an off-ramp.
However, it is still unclear to police why the driver chose to enter on the highway off-ramp.
‘Well, that’s probably something we will never know. I mean, I can only … report on the facts as we know it,’ Detective Le Tessier said.
‘We know what happened, and our investigation is now focusing on why, but I can’t answer that at this stage.’
Despite ‘very fierce’ fire consuming the Toyota RAV4 police were able to retrieve some dash-cam footage from the wreck that detail the car’s movements prior to the crash.
‘The files on that SD card indicate he was driving through the streets of Belmont and Cloverdale prior to the incident, and he was driving well in excess of the posted speed limit,’ Detective Le Tessier said.
Detective Le Tessier said the accident was ‘almost the most horrific incident you could attend as … the police officer in a road crash scenario, very confronting’.
“It’s such a tragic event for that family — not just for that family who’ve lost a mother and daughter … there’s four families who have been impacted by this,” he said.