A teenage driver was speeding and driving in the middle of the road when he caused a crash that killed 17-year-old Knights' junior Elijah Faalua in the Hunter Economic Zone last year.
But the tragedy would have been avoided if someone had not installed "wholly inappropriate" steel bollards in the middle of the road, which lawyers for the driver say represented a "very significant hazard to road users".
The teenager, now 18, who cannot be identified because he was a juvenile at the time of the crash, has pleaded guilty to dangerous driving occasioning death and faced a sentence hearing in Cessnock Children's Court on Monday. The teenager, who is represented by barrister Mark Preece and solicitor James Janke, will be sentenced later this month.
The bollards, which are filled with concrete and reinforced, are "a very heavy-duty barrier of the type used for counter terrorism to prevent incursion [and are] designed to stop vehicles and in doing so destroy and disable them", Mr Preece said on Monday.
Mr Preece said while the teenager was speeding, travelling at about 90km/h in what he was later told was a 50km/h private road, there was poor lighting and no warning that he was quickly approaching the bollards.
And while it was illegal, Mr Preece told Magistrate Robyn Richardson that there was nothing "inherently dangerous" about the teenager driving in the middle of a long stretch of straight road.
"In the circumstances of the case the act of crossing to the middle of the road was not in itself dangerous," he said. "It only became so because of the highly irregular placements of these bollards in the carriageway."
And, in written submissions, Mr Preece said: "It is quite astonishing that these bollards remain in position to this day, and that an array of remedial legislative power available to various governmental agencies, and the local council, has not been utilised to effect their removal".
The teenage driver was arrested in August last year after an investigation by the Hunter Crash Investigation Unit.
But 18 months on the bollards still stand on the long stretch of road, except now are adorned with a sticker saying: "Faalua. Forever 17".
