The Calder Freeway on Friday morning, after a truck ran over a car. Credit:Justin McManus "The front wheels sort of came off the ground and I see the truck just roll straight over the ute," one witness told Channel Seven. The witness said he and other motorists tried to save the ute driver. "We pulled a lot of things off the ute and as soon as we see him ... we just sort of, we couldn't do it no more," he said. Police confirmed the truck driver, aged in his 30s, was in hospital under police guard on Friday evening.

The scene of a crash on the Princes Freeway on Thursday. Credit:Facebook/7NewsMelbourne The inbound lanes of the Calder Freeway were closed for more than eight hours on Friday. The deadly crash was one of three on Victorian roads in less than 24 hours involved trucks, sparking concerns over truck driver distraction and increasing pressure for improvements to be made to crash black spots. About 18 hours earlier, there was a strikingly similar crash on the Princes Freeway in Point Cook, which claimed the life of a 28-year-old Hoppers Crossing man, and left his passenger in hospital. 'Crash black spot'

The scene of Friday's crash on the Calder Freeway, between Keilor Park and Bendigo, was marked as a "known crash black spot" by the Andrews government last year. The stretch of road was flagged last year as a priority in the state government's $340 million road safety strategy, after dozens of fatal crashes in the past few decades. It's understood work has begun on the installation of nearly 30 kilometres of flexible road safety barriers along the Calder Freeway between Kyneton and Faraday. "Any loss of life on our roads has a devastating impact on every family involved and to have two similar crashes occur within 24 hours is incredibly tragic," Acting Minister for Road Safety Jacinta Allan said. 'Catastrophic results'

Thursday's fatal crash on the Princes Freeway, near Forsyth Road, involved a truck and six cars. Detective Sergeant Stephen Hill, from the major collisions investigation unit, said the truck came from behind and collided with six cars in heavy traffic on the Forsyth Road exit. "The vehicles were in the left-hand lane and they were either stopped or coming to a stop," he said. "For some reason, the truck has failed to stop in time and collided heavily with the first vehicle, and subsequently continued along and collided with the remaining five vehicles." The 28-year-old Hoppers Crossing man, who was killed, and the 31-year-old Hoppers Crossing woman, who was injured, were in the first car hit.

The woman was taken to Royal Melbourne Hospital, where she remained in a stable condition on Friday. It's understood work is currently under way on the Princes Freeway at the Forsyth Road off ramp to widen the freeway and construct an extra exit lane to reduce congestion. The state government's $2.8 million upgrade is expected to be completed by mid-2017. Detective Sergeant Hill said investigators were not excluding any factors, including whether drugs, alcohol, speeding, fatigue, or distraction led to the fatal crash. He said it was "incumbent" on truck drivers to "pay more attention to cars, so that they have more time to adjust to changing traffic conditions ahead of them". "Failure to do so has such catastrophic results," he said.