logo
BREAKING NEWS Sydney M4 crash: Major traffic delays after motorcyclist is struck by a police car

BREAKING NEWS Sydney M4 crash: Major traffic delays after motorcyclist is struck by a police car

Daily Mail​7 days ago
A motorbike rider has died in a horror crash on the M4 Motorway after he was struck by two cars including a police vehicle.
The motorcyclist was travelling east along the M4 near Church Street at Parramatta, in Sydney 's west, when he collided with a white sedan at about 2am on Wednesday.
He rider was thrown from his bike and onto the road when a marked police vehicle, from Cumberland Police Area Command, then struck into him.
Police immediately started CPR until paramedics arrived at the scene.
The man, who was yet to be identified, was rushed to Westmead Hospital but could not be revived.
The driver of the sedan and a male Senior Constable were also taken to Westmead Hospital for mandatory testing.
'The police vehicle was not on urgent duty and did not have lights or sirens activated at the time,' NSW Police said.
'There had been no interaction with and no pursuit of the motorcyclist or any other vehicle.
'Initial information is the officers were returning to the station when the incident occurred.'
Police have established a crime scene and a critical incident team, including officers from Auburn Police and the Crash Investigation Unit, are investigating the incident.
The investigation will be subject of an independent review by the Professional Standards Command and oversight by the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission.
A report will be prepared for the Coroner.
Investigators are at the scene and have closed all eastbound lanes between Cumberland Highway and Burnett Street in Merrylands.
There is no forecast of when the road will reopen, with motorists being urged to avoid the area.
Heavier vehicles should use the Cumberland Highway, Great Western Highway, Church St, Parramatta Rd, and James Ruse Dr to return to the motorway.
According to Live Traffic, congestion is banked up to Huntingwood.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Fallen TV cooking show host breaks his silence about sex charge shock - despite his lawyer telling him not to speak as he makes a furtive dash to see cops
Fallen TV cooking show host breaks his silence about sex charge shock - despite his lawyer telling him not to speak as he makes a furtive dash to see cops

Daily Mail​

time5 hours ago

  • Daily Mail​

Fallen TV cooking show host breaks his silence about sex charge shock - despite his lawyer telling him not to speak as he makes a furtive dash to see cops

Former Ready Steady Cook! host Peter Everett has broken his silence as he reported for bail at a police station following his shock arrest on underage sex charges. The fallen TV show star initially attempted to sneak past waiting media, opting to drive around the streets of Sydney 's eastern suburbs, only to return two hours later. But he opened up to Daily Mail Australia as he left Waverley Police Station after he was charged with child sex offences at his Toukley home on the NSW Central Coast. 'I am holding up as well as possible,' Everett, 66, told Daily Mail Australia. 'My solicitor has advised me not to speak, but I am pleading not guilty.' He was granted bail with strict conditions that include reporting twice a week. He has been charged with sexually touching a 16-year-old boy without consent and appeared in Sydney's Parramatta Local Court over the weekend. On Monday police sought an Apprehended Violence Order against Everett on behalf of a third party identified only as 'MD'. The matter will be heard at Wyong Local Court on Thursday. Mandatory interim conditions, including bans on assaulting, threatening, stalking, harassing or intimidating the alleged victim, remain in place. Officers from the Tuggerah Lakes Police District had begun investigating the alleged incident the day before Everett's arrest. 'Following extensive inquiries, police arrested a 66-year-old man at a home at Toukley,' a statement from NSW Police read. 'The man was taken to Wyong Police Station where he was charged with sexually touching another person without consent.' Everett spent Saturday night in a cell before his bail hearing at Parramatta Local Court on Sunday. He may only return to his home to collect his belongings with a police escort, and is forbidden from contacting his alleged victim or any witnesses. He pleaded not guilty to the charge and denied any wrongdoing when approached by waiting media outside. Everett was best known for hosting the Channel 10 daytime cooking show Ready Steady Cook for five years from 2006. He was unceremoniously sacked from the show over the phone in 2011. In 2022, Everett revealed he was selling off his possessions just 'to survive' after a tough few years during the Covid-19 pandemic. Everett, who regularly appears at food festivals across the country, told 4BC Afternoons host Rob McKnight he'd 'lost his livelihood' because of the lockdowns. 'There's been a lot of sales on my behalf. I'm selling anything - not down to the garage sale yet - but I've been selling off a lot of things,' Everett said. 'It really hasn't been an easy time. It hasn't. The entertainment industry, a lot of my friends, far less fortunate than I, have had it really, really bad.' After he was dumped from the show in 2011, he said he was 'disappointed' to have been fired over the phone just before heading overseas on holiday. Rory Callaghan, the CEO of Southern Star Productions (now Endemol Australia), which produced the series, later defended the decision to sack Everett. Callaghan told TV Tonight: 'It was me who called him and said, 'Don't bother coming back from Bali.' It was a hard production with him so it was time to move on.' Speaking to in 2019, Everett added: '[Callaghan] was saying that I think I'm greater than the show. I think it meant I thought I was so indispensable and that they couldn't do the show without me.' In 2023, Everett unleashed on Channel 10 producers for failing to invite him back for the 2024 reboot. Everett told New Idea magazine that he was devastated and could barely sleep after learning that chef Miguel Maestre was hosting the program. 'I was like a three-year-old for a couple of days, who constantly asks, 'Why, why, why?'' he said. 'They didn't approach me for some reason. Who knows why? It's a shame.'

Political censors have cynically hijacked vital child protections
Political censors have cynically hijacked vital child protections

Telegraph

time5 hours ago

  • Telegraph

Political censors have cynically hijacked vital child protections

Britons woke up last week to discover that their firehose of digital smut had been strangled, albeit temporarily for consenting adults. Undeniably, the introduction of age verification regulations does mark a huge change in our relationship with the internet, hitherto a pornographic free-for-all. It may feel like a shock to find a third party inserting itself between you and a website, apparently demanding to know who you are, but it shouldn't be a surprise: it's eight years since the UK Government published its online harms green paper under Theresa May, and The Telegraph launched its Duty of Care campaign the following year. After much wrangling, the result was the 2023 Online Safety Act. In March, the first part of went into effect, placing new obligations on platforms to remove content that is legal, but harmful to children: suicide advice, eating disorders or dangerous stunt challenges. The second phase went into force last week, requiring age checks for pornography sites. 'Companies have effectively been treating all users as if they're adults, leaving children potentially exposed to porn and other types of harmful content,' wrote Melanie Dawes, Ofcom's chief executive, in January. The UK is not an outlier in its desire to keep children safe, either. Texas and three other US states require age verification for adult material, and so will Australia. But critics of the law have warned of consequences for free expression from the start, and over-zealous interpretations quickly became apparent. X, previously Twitter, has already put material behind the age gate, with Benjamin Jones, director of case management at the Free Speech Union – of which I am a member – identifying a number of posts which were worryingly censored for unverified users. Some supported calls for single-sex spaces for women. One by Wuhan lab researcher Billy Bostickson (a pseudonym) fell foul too; it was part of a thread on the use of bamboo RNA in vaccines. Several posts in a thread discussing Richard the Lionheart were gated, which merely contained a reference to the crusades. Most troublingly, a post linking to a live stream of police arrests at a demonstration at a migrant hotel in Leeds was also taken down. All these bans appear to have been the work of an over-zealous algorithm. Some saw this coming. Baroness Claire Fox has written of her dismay at realising how outnumbered speech advocates were when she was in a room as the only free speech advocate, alongside dozens of groups all requesting some clause or addition. 'Only two of us [peers] consistently opposed the bill – myself and Lord Daniel Moylan. I was shocked that so many from the free speech camp of peers were silent,' Fox tells me. 'It became a Christmas tree bill with lots of other things put in it,' said Kemi Badenoch as she campaigned for the Conservative leadership last year. She also predicted 'it will go after people who aren't doing anything wrong'. That hasn't quite happened yet, but long overdue moves to enforce accountability on giant, transnational platforms, and better protect children unfortunately coincided with a renewed desire to control political speech. The good state must take an active role in removing inflammatory speech, the United Nations declared in its 2021 paper Our Common Agenda. It re-emphasised the point last year. William Perrin, one of the architects of Ofcom's approach to regulating online platforms, who was not involved in drafting the legislation, recently posted a paper for the think tank Demos called Epistemic Security 2029: Protecting the UK's information supply chains and strengthening discourse for the next political era. It explicitly calls for the policing of social media platforms. One gets the sense that as long as populists are rising, the impulse to censor will be irresistible to their political opponents. By controlling our discourse, they can control democracy. 'We have an establishment that is innately hostile to Free Speech,' Jones of the Free Speech Union tells me. There is very much wrong with this. Against a backdrop of widespread concern about street crime, shoplifting and rampant fraud, the energy devoted by police to what we say online is confounding, from enthusiasm for the category of 'non-crime hate incidents' to the creation of a special monitoring unit. The implicit idea seems to be that if we stop talking about something the underlying problem will go away. With Britain a tinderbox, and a long summer ahead, this seems a brave moment to test the proposition. It is understandable why age verification and clumsy algorithms sow suspicion of the system itself. In reality, however, online anonymity was always illusory. Your broadband operator has always known who you are and which sites you visit. So has the shady VPN provider. Google collected your pornography browsing history even while you were browsing in 'incognito' mode, for which it was sued, agreeing later to delete billions of records in a settlement. What our alarm reflects is a wholesale loss of trust in the Government. Ofcom points to polling showing the Online Safety Act is widely supported. It is highly regrettable that a bien-pensant blob has cynically hijacked child protection law to ensure it has a media landscape more in keeping with its views. But there's plenty of blame to go around. One lesson of the Online Safety Act is that free-speech advocates also needed a plausible child protection plan. They never came up with one – and were duly steamrollered. The consequences for Britain may be profound.

Police name e-scooter rider killed in A78 crash with ambulance
Police name e-scooter rider killed in A78 crash with ambulance

BBC News

time5 hours ago

  • BBC News

Police name e-scooter rider killed in A78 crash with ambulance

A teenage e-scooter rider who died following a crash involving an ambulance has been John Donaldson was critically injured in a collision on the A78, near the Pennyburn roundabout, at about 02:35 on Donaldson, 18, from Irvine, was pronounced dead at the scene of the incident in the North Ayrshire Scotland said inquires were ongoing and asked anyone with information to contact officers. The Scottish Ambulance Service extended its condolences to Mr Donaldson's family and friends.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store