Sarah Tonkin Inquiry: New mother was driving home from funeral with her baby boy when tragedy struck. Here’s how she could have been saved

A new mother has died in a horrific car crash that could have been prevented with a simple safety measure, a coroner has found.

Sarah Tonkin from Torquay was struck by a large steel tow bar that left the road after a passing lorry and then flew through her windscreen in 2019 as she was driving home from her aunt’s funeral.

Her Hyundai Tucson SUV left the Geelong-Bacchus Marsh Rd at Balliang East, west of Melbourne, before ending up on its side and hitting a tree.

Mrs Tonkin, 37, died at the scene but her eight-month-old son Austin, who was in the back seat, miraculously survived.

The baby escaped with only minor scratches and was released from the hospital 24 hours later.

The loose tow bar belonged to an Isuzu truck that was being driven from a truck dealer in the Geelong suburb of Corio to a new owner in Sunbury, on Melbourne’s north-western fringe.

Judge Audrey Jamieson found that the truck had been driven for 35km before the tow bar became detached without the driver’s knowledge, the Herald Sun reported.

The Victoria Police Heavy Vehicle Unit Criminal Investigation Unit examined the truck’s safety inspection records and determined that the tow bar was not properly secured to the tow bar with the tow pin.

Sarah Tonkin (pictured left with baby Austin and her husband Gregor Jeffery) was killed when a truck tow section flew through her windscreen on a road in Victoria in 2019

Judge Jamieson told the inquest it was unclear whether the tow bar had been fitted incorrectly or whether it had been removed by an unknown person while the truck was parked at Winter & Taylor between November 28 and December 13, 2019.

The area where the truck was parked was open to the public and there had been reports of thefts.

However, the judge said the risk of similar incidents in the future could be “significantly reduced” if the tow bar pins were attached with a flexible cable, such as a chain or rope, so that the component would remain attached to the vehicle if it fell off.

She urged VicRoads and the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator to consider the proposal.

The coroner also requested that the installation of the tow bar be checked by vehicle experts to ensure it was installed correctly and safely.

Gregor Jeffery remembered his wife Sarah Tonkin as a ‘bloody legend’

After leaving the road, Ms. Tonkin’s Hyundai Tucson SUV rolled onto its side and crashed into a tree

Mrs Tonkin’s father Richard previously called the fatal incident a “freak accident”.

“We’ve had to accept that it happened. Sarah was in the wrong place at the wrong time, by about a nanosecond. Otherwise it wouldn’t have happened anyway,” he said.

Mr Tonkin recalls the last moments he spent with his daughter at his sister-in-law’s funeral, where he waited with her until she went to the toilet and changed her baby son.

“We kissed and then she said, ‘Don’t wait, go to the funeral.’ So I walked away,” he said.

“The what ifs and whys and all that stuff, you can ask all those questions. If she hadn’t asked that guy, if she had gone straight to the bathroom, those crucial seconds would have passed and it wouldn’t have happened.”

A coroner believes a simple safety measure to prevent the truck part from becoming detached could have prevented the tragedy

Gregor Jeffery, Tonkin’s husband of five years, called his wife a “bloody legend” as he tried to come to terms with raising their son alone.

The couple tried for years to conceive before Austin was born in April 2019.

“I’ve lost my best friend. We were good friends before we even got together, and have been best friends ever since,” Jeffery told the Herald Sun at the time of the tragedy.

‘I always said to her, “You’re a legend Tonks” — her nickname was Tonks — and we were a good team doing different things… She’s a legend and I miss her terribly.’