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I started this business in 1958.
That’s not a number I throw around for effect. It means I was out here on the Princes Highway before the bypasses, before the crash barriers, before mobile phones, before GPS. Back when “roadside assistance” meant someone driving past and pulling over because they recognised you were in trouble.
A lot has changed on this road. The trucks are bigger. The traffic is heavier. The summers bring more holidaymakers than ever before, and the road between Nowra and Ulladulla has become one of the busiest regional corridors in New South Wales.
Some things haven’t changed at all. People still make the same mistakes in breakdowns. The same situations still turn dangerous. And the same simple actions still save lives.
This post is everything six decades on the South Coast has taught me about driver safety — not as a road safety bureaucrat, but as the person who shows up when things go wrong.
What This Road Has Taught Me
The Princes Highway Is More Dangerous Than Most Drivers Realise
People drive the Princes Highway in holiday mode. Windows down, music on, time to relax. That’s understandable — it is a beautiful road. But beauty doesn’t protect you from the road’s real character.
Between 2018 and 2022, there were 25 fatal accidents on the Princes Highway from Berry south to the NSW and Victorian border, and nearly 800 crashes across the 400-kilometre stretch of highway in that five-year period.
I’ve attended scenes at Termeil Creek, near the Bendalong turnoff, around the Lake Conjola stretch — spots that look completely unremarkable until they’re not. One of the deadliest crashes on this stretch occurred near Lake Tabourie, just 13 kilometres south of Ulladulla, where a vehicle left the road at 4:30 in the morning, and three people lost their lives.
I was working the night that the Boxing Day crash happened north of Ulladulla in 2019. Two cars collided and burst into flames 400 metres north of the Bendalong turnoff. There are stretches of this highway I can close my eyes and see as clearly as my own driveway — because I’ve been called to them too many times.
This isn’t to frighten you off the road. It’s to make sure you drive it with the respect it deserves.
Holiday Traffic Is the Highest-Risk Period
Through six decades, a consistent pattern I’ve seen: the most dangerous time on the South Coast isn’t bad weather. It’s the first 48 hours of a school holiday long weekend.
Why? Fatigued drivers arriving from Sydney or Canberra after sitting in traffic for two to three hours. Vehicles packed to the roof with holiday gear. Drivers who haven’t checked their tyres or fluid levels before a 200-kilometre run.
The Princes Highway through the Shoalhaven and South Coast experiences significant congestion during long weekends, school holidays, and special events. That congestion creates its own hazards — frustrated drivers overtaking in marginal gaps, rear-end collisions in heavy traffic, overheated engines sitting idle in summer heat.
My busiest call-out days, year after year: the Friday evening of Easter, the first day of school holidays in December, and Boxing Day morning. Plan your trip accordingly.
The Vehicles That Break Down Have Something in Common
After 62 years, I can almost predict which cars I’ll be towing before the call comes in.
Vehicles that break down on the Princes Highway fall into a few categories:
- Under-maintained vehicles driven by owners who don’t realise the state of their tyres, belts, or battery until they’re 150 kilometres from home
- Overloaded holiday vehicles — roof boxes, packed boots, boat trailers, and caravans, adding weight, the vehicle isn’t serviced to handle
- Vehicles that “were fine last week” — fine around town doesn’t mean fine on a long highway run at sustained speed and temperature.
I’m not saying this to judge anyone. I’m saying it because a pre-trip check costs nothing, and a breakdown on the Princes Highway costs time, money, and sometimes much more than that.
The 7 Safety Lessons I’ve Learned on the Road
Lesson 1 — Most Roadside Incidents Are Predictable and Preventable
This is the hardest truth to hear, but it’s the most important: the majority of breakdowns I attend didn’t have to happen.
A flat tyre from a tread worn to the cords. A dead battery that hadn’t held a charge for three months. An overheating engine with coolant that hadn’t been checked in years. These aren’t mechanical mysteries. They’re deferred maintenance that finally reached a deadline on a busy highway.
Before any South Coast road trip, check:
- Tyre pressure and tread depth (minimum legal tread depth in NSW is 1.5mm — replace at 2mm)
- Engine coolant level
- Engine oil level
- Battery condition (especially if it’s over three years old)
- All lights — headlights, brake lights, indicators, hazards
- Windscreen wipers — particularly important on the Princes Highway in autumn and winter
- Brake fluid level
Ten minutes in your driveway. That’s all it takes.
Lesson 2 — Where You Stop Matters as Much as That You Stop
When a vehicle starts behaving badly, the instinct is to stop immediately. But where you stop can make the difference between a minor inconvenience and a serious accident.
The Princes Highway between Nowra and Ulladulla has sections with wide shoulders and dedicated emergency bays, and sections where the road edge drops sharply, or the shoulder barely exists. Road shoulders provide a critical area for broken-down vehicles to stop and recover, as well as space for motorists to avoid hazards on the road, which is why the NSW Government has invested significantly in shoulder widening on this corridor in recent years.
In practice: if your vehicle gives you any warning at all — a temperature gauge creeping up, a tyre that feels soft, a strange noise — use that warning to reach the safest possible stop point. Drive to an emergency bay, a town, or a service station. Don’t stop on a blind corner or a narrow shoulder if you can safely go further.
If you have no choice, stop as far left as you can get.
Lesson 3 — Your Hazard Lights Are Your Most Important Safety Tool
I’ve attended breakdowns where the driver had the bonnet up, was walking around the vehicle, hadn’t turned their hazard lights on — because they thought they’d “only be a minute.”
There is no such thing as only a minute on a highway.
Hazard lights on. Immediately. Before you assess the situation, before you call anyone, before you get out of the car. Those flashing lights are your only communication with traffic approaching at 100km/h that something is ahead.
If you carry them, deploy road triangles or flares at least 100 metres behind your vehicle — further on hills or corners where visibility is reduced.
At night, leave your interior light on. It signals that there’s a person in or near the vehicle.
Lesson 4 — Stay Inside the Vehicle If the Shoulder Is Narrow
This is the lesson people find hardest to accept, because the instinct when you’re broken down is to get away from the car.
If your vehicle is stopped with reasonable clearance from the live lane, staying inside with your seatbelt on is often the safest position. A vehicle that’s struck by passing traffic offers significant crash protection. Standing beside it, or behind it, does not.
If passengers need to exit, they should exit from the side away from traffic and move well clear of the road — up a bank, behind a barrier, into the bush if necessary. Not beside the vehicle.
On the Princes Highway, particularly through the narrower sections between Conjola and Termeil, this matters enormously. I have attended too many incidents where the secondary injury — the person hit while standing beside their broken-down vehicle — was far more serious than the original mechanical failure.
Lesson 5 — Don’t Attempt Repairs You’re Not Certain About
A tyre change on a wide, flat shoulder with good visibility: reasonable, if you know what you’re doing.
A tyre change on a narrow shoulder at night, on a gradient, on the traffic side of the vehicle: call a tow truck.
The decision to attempt a roadside repair should always factor in the safety of the repair environment, not just your mechanical capability. I’ve towed vehicles that were damaged further because someone tried to fix the wrong thing in the wrong conditions. I’ve also attended situations where someone was nearly struck while working on a tyre.
Ask yourself: if a truck came past at speed right now while I’m outside this vehicle, where would I be? If the answer isn’t “completely clear of danger,” call us.
Lesson 6 — Know the Difference Between Your Breakdown and an Accident Scene
If you’ve been in an accident — any collision, regardless of severity — the rules change completely.
First: call 000 if there are injuries, or if vehicles are obstructing traffic and creating an ongoing hazard.
Do not move vehicles until police advise you to, unless they’re in an immediately dangerous position. In NSW, insurance claims and liability assessments often depend on the positioning of vehicles — moving them prematurely can complicate things significantly.
You also have rights at an accident scene that people often don’t know. <a href= “https://garnersontheroadtowing.com.au/accident-towing.html”>In NSW, you have the legal right to choose your own tow operator after a collision</a>. You don’t have to accept whoever shows up first. Nominate us if you’re in our service area, and we’ll coordinate directly with your insurer.
Lesson 7 — Call Local
I say this not because it benefits us — though it does — but because it genuinely matters to the outcome.
When you call a national breakdown line or your insurer’s general assistance number, a dispatcher in another city looks at a map and sends whoever is contracted to your zone. That might take an hour. It might take two. On a busy holiday weekend, it can take longer.
When you call us directly, you’re calling a Conjola-based operator who knows this highway, knows the council road crews, knows where the emergency bays are, knows which sections flood, and knows the fastest access routes. We’ve been doing this since 1958. This isn’t a call centre. It’s a local family business that has been part of this community for longer than most of our customers have been alive.
That’s the difference between a one-hour wait and a five-minute response.
What’s Changed — And What Hasn’t
The Road Is Getting Safer (Slowly)
In recent years, the NSW Government has invested substantially in the Princes Highway corridor. The $60 million corridor safety and efficiency upgrades program targets the highway between Sussex Inlet Road and Moruya, prioritising areas with a history of fatal and serious injury crashes.
These upgrades include wider centrelines to increase space between vehicles travelling in opposite directions, reducing the risk of head-on crashes; flexible roadside safety barriers to redirect drivers back into their lane; and widened shoulders to provide space for broken-down vehicles.
All of this is progress. Real, meaningful progress that will save lives on a road I’ve driven thousands of times.
But infrastructure takes years. The behaviours that cause crashes — distraction, fatigue, speed, impairment, poor vehicle maintenance — those are in your hands today.
Technology Has Changed Breakdowns — Mostly for the Better
When I started in 1958, a broken-down driver’s options were: wait for someone to stop, walk to the nearest town, or sit until dark. The Princes Highway between Nowra and Ulladulla had far fewer people on it, and help could take hours.
Today, most drivers have a mobile phone. That’s transformative. The ability to call for help within seconds, share your location via GPS, and stay in contact until we arrive has made the job dramatically safer for both drivers and operators.
The catch: Lake Conjola and the surrounding national park areas, along with sections through Termeil and approaching Bendalong, can have patchy phone coverage. If your signal is weak, call before it drops out entirely. And always leave home with a charged phone.
The Drivers Have Changed Too
Over six decades, I’ve noticed a shift in how drivers approach mechanical problems. Most people now don’t have the hands-on mechanical familiarity their parents or grandparents did. That’s not a criticism — it’s just reality. Cars are more complex. Fewer people work on their own vehicles.
What this means in practice: modern drivers are generally better at calling for help (because they don’t feel like they should be able to fix it themselves), but sometimes less confident about what to do in the minutes before help arrives.
That’s what this post is for.
What to Do in the Specific Situations We See Most Often
Flat Tyre on the Princes Highway
- Don’t brake hard — ease off the accelerator and steer firmly
- Signal left and coast to the best available stop point
- Hazards on immediately
- Assess: Is the shoulder safe to change a tyre? Which tyre? What’s approaching traffic like?
- If in doubt — call us. A tyre change isn’t worth your life.
- If you proceed: wheel brace, jack, spare — and know that “skinny” emergency spares are speed-limited (typically 80km/h) and not suitable for highway travel to a distant destination. Get to the nearest tyre shop.
Dead Battery
- Try a jump start if a vehicle is available — ensure correct polarity (red to red, black to chassis/earth, not negative terminal)
- If your battery has failed completely in a remote section, a jump start may not hold long enough to reach help
- A portable jump pack in your boot costs around $80–100 and is the single most useful piece of gear you can carry
Overheating Engine
- Turn off the air conditioning — it puts a load on the engine
- If the temperature gauge is still rising, pull over safely and turn the engine off
- Do not open the radiator cap while the engine is hot — the system is pressurised and can cause serious burns
- Wait a minimum of 20–30 minutes before assessing coolant levels
- If the system is low on coolant and you have water, you can top up — water will do in an emergency
- Do not restart and continue driving if the cause is unresolved — an overheated engine can seize and result in a tow regardless
Accident Recovery
- Call 000 if there are injuries or if vehicles are causing a hazard
- Stay calm and stay safe — assess your own physical condition first
- Document the scene (photos) before anything moves, if it’s safe to do so
- Exchange details with other parties
- Contact your insurer — and nominate your preferred tow operator
- Call Garners: 0408 202 936
Our Commitment to the South Coast Community
Sixty-two years is a long time to do one thing. The reason we’re still here is simple: we’ve done it right.
We’ve been trusted by locals who’ve lived on the South Coast their whole lives. By tourists from Sydney who’ve never been stranded before and didn’t know who to call. By insurance companies that need to know a vehicle will be handled professionally and delivered intact. By police who need a reliable, experienced operator at an accident scene.
The South Coast is our home. Lake Conjola, Conjola National Park, the Shoalhaven waterways, Bendalong, Manyana, Sussex Inlet, Ulladulla — we know every metre of it.
We don’t have a call centre. We don’t have a national franchise. We have 62 years of experience, a professional fleet, and a direct phone number that gets answered every time, at any hour of the day or night.
The Short Version: Save This Before You Need It
Before you drive the Princes Highway:
- Check tyres, oil, coolant, battery, and lights.
- Charge your phone
- Save this number: 0408 202 936
If you break down:
- Hazards on immediately
- Get as far left as possible
- Stay inside if the shoulder is narrow
- Call us directly — don’t wait on hold with a national line
If you’ve been in an accident:
- Call 000 for injuries first
- Don’t move vehicles until police advise
- You have the right to choose your own tow operator — choose local
Call Garners On The Road Towing — 24/7, Every Day of the Year
0408 202 936 1046 Princes Highway, Conjola NSW 2539 garnersontheroadtowing@gmail.com License No: 08016250
We’re here when the road gets complicated. We always have been.
Explore our services:
- 24/7 Emergency Towing →
- Accident Towing →
- Roadside Assistance →
- 4WD Recovery →
- Insurance Towing →
- Tilt Tray Towing →
Garners On The Road Towing has served the NSW South Coast community since 1958. Family-owned and locally operated, we provide 24/7 towing, roadside assistance, accident recovery, 4WD recovery, boat towing, and secure vehicle storage. Based at 1046 Princes Highway, Conjola NSW 2539. Licensed operator: 08016250. ABN: 72 426 459 511.