A woman is dead and a man is fighting for his life after a horror 18-car accident on the F3 freeway, north of Sydney Thursday night.
The crash happened just after 9 p.m., when a tail shaft came loose from a semi-trailer near the Hawkesbury River Bridge at Berowra.
Eighteen cars were damaged after running over the object and fuel was spilled on the road.
A Rural Fire Service truck which responded to the accident was doing a U-turn in an emergency bay just south of the Mooney Mooney Bridge when it was rear-ended by a car about an hour later.
A 64-year-old woman was thrown from the passenger seat of the car and was hit by an oncoming car, which then careered into the fire truck.
She died at the scene.
A 73-year-old man, believed to be her husband, had to be freed from the wreckage.
He is in a critical condition in hospital with head, internal and suspected spinal injuries.
The drivers of the other vehicles suffered minor injuries.
In a separate accident, a car crashed with a truck about 6:00am today.
The crash blocked two of the three southbound lanes of the F3, just south of the Hawkesbury River Bridge.
Traffic has now returned to normal after the three crashes in nine hours.
Roads Minister Duncan Gay has vowed to fix any problems with the F3 that may have caused last night's freak crash.
"We need to have the proper accident investigation to find out what happened," he said.
"Sometimes it's just driver error; if there's anything to do with the road surface we'd fix it.
"I have to worry about stopping people being killed in the future and that comes out of the accident investigation."
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