The victim of a horrific highway crash has fought through tears while recounting the day she was "ripped away" from life as she knew it.
"It really is a miracle that there were no fatalities," Ashleigh Allred said in Queanbeyan Local Court on Tuesday, when she delivered a victim impact statement about the Barton Highway crash that left her paralysed.
Ms Allred was not the only victim of truck driver David Cameron, who claims he fell asleep at the wheel of a prime mover before ploughing into the back of stationary traffic.
Cameron, 60, injured five people in the April 2022 incident, which occurred on the highway at Wallaroo.
Court documents show he had been driving for nearly eight hours, excluding a breakfast stop, by the time his logging truck came up behind a row of cars that had stopped because of roadworks.
Dashcam footage from the prime mover revealed Cameron would have had a clear view of the traffic for about 350 metres prior to hitting Ms Allred's car, had he been paying attention.
But the Victorian man failed to keep a proper lookout and, without braking, rear-ended the blue Toyota Kluger carrying Ms Allred and her two sons at roughly 63kmh.
The impact shunted Ms Allred's vehicle forwards into other stationary cars, injuring the remaining victims.
Their ailments were thankfully minor compared to those suffered by Ms Allred, who sat in her wheelchair on Tuesday as she detailed how she had been hospitalised for about seven-and-a-half months.
'Something I will never forget'
Now a paraplegic, Ms Allred suffered spinal fractures, 17 broken ribs and two collapsed lungs in the crash.
The incident also left her with a dislocated hip and fractures of the femur, elbow and nose, as well as seven broken teeth.
Flanked by supporters, who recoiled when the dashcam footage was played in court, she said she had been having a "dance battle" with one of her sons just before Cameron's truck collided with her car.
"The cries of my boys is something I will never forget," Ms Allred said in her victim impact statement, describing how she screamed to them to hold on when she realised what was happening.
She subsequently pleaded with a surgeon, who was flown to the scene, not to amputate her limbs.
After what felt like "a lifetime" trapped in her car, fighting to stay alive long enough to see her sons removed from the wreckage, Ms Allred was finally freed.
While her boys remarkably suffered only minor injuries, Ms Allred spent the next 13 days in a coma.
"Thirteen days my children didn't hear my voice," she said on Tuesday.
"Thirteen days my family cried over every decision they had to make for my lifeless body."
Ms Allred said she was grateful to have now "come out the other side", but, with ongoing pain and further surgery required, "the fight isn't over".
"I was ripped away from my kids, my family, my life, in the blink of an eye," she told Cameron in court.
"Your actions that day caused all of this."
Driver 'disappointed'
Cameron pleaded guilty to negligent driving occasioning grievous bodily harm, along with four counts of causing bodily harm by misconduct in charge of a motor vehicle.
In an affidavit tendered to the court on Tuesday, Cameron said he felt "very sorry for the victims and disappointed in myself".
"In all my years driving trucks, I never thought that I could be responsible for injuring so many people," the former heavy vehicle driver, who had 30 years of experience in the field, wrote.
Cameron's counsel told the court the volunteer firefighter had been tired on the day in question and had most likely fallen asleep while driving.
The barrister said Cameron, who had not driven since the day in question, had subsequently been diagnosed with "severe" sleep apnoea.
He acknowledged Cameron had not told the truth when, at the scene, the 60-year-old informed police the row of stationary cars had suddenly stopped in front of him before his foot "bounced off" the brakes.
Prosecutor Jillian Walshe said these "untruths" should concern magistrate Roger Clisdell as she urged him to impose a jail term, rejecting the defence barrister's submission that this would be unnecessary.
"The number of victims in this case is significant," Ms Walshe said, describing the matter as "tragic".
Mr Clisdell indicated he planned to hand down a sentence on August 29.
"They are the hardest by a long shot," he said in relation to deciding on sentences for negligent driving.
