All eastbound lanes on Highway 401 were closed for much of Friday near Cambridge following a fatal collision involving two transport trucks and a dump truck.

It happened on the highway near Cedar Creek Road at around 7:30 a.m.

Crews were working to extricate a person who was trapped following the collision but that person succumbed to their injuries on scene.

OPP have said that the victim was the driver of one of the transport trucks.

“Firefighters were on the scene trying to extricate the injured and an air ambulance was on the ground waiting to transport but sadly that is not the case,” OPP Sgt. Kerry Schmidt told CP24.

The eastbound lanes were closed at Cedar Creek Road until about 5 p.m. Friday.

The driver killed in the collision has been identified by police as 59-year-old Abdual Waheed of Ajax.

Schmidt told CP24 that there is an “unbelievable amount of damage” from the collision, including debris that has been spread all over the roadway. He said that it will likely take “most of the day” to clean up the highway and complete the investigation at the scene.

The cause of the collision has not been determined but Schmidt said driver inattention could be a factor.

“Driver inattention is certainly something we will be looking into as a potential cause. Traffic was slowing down prior to this collision. There were several other minor fender benders that were just up the road. Traffic may have been slowing down for that or may have just been slowing down for regular rush hour congestion but here we have a transport truck slamming into the back of slowing or nearly stopped traffic.”

The collision comes just one day after a news conference in which the OPP laid charges against three transport truck drivers in connection with a trio of deadly crashes this summer.

At the news conference, OPP Commissioner Vince Hawkes said that there has been an alarming spike in collisions involving transport trucks where inattentiveness is to blame.

He said that most truck drivers use caution and are among the safest operators on the roads but others don’t and are essentially behind the wheel of “a time bomb that is traveling down the highway.

“Those are the guys that we have to get,” Hawkes said.

There have now been 68 people this year who have died on Ontario roads as a result of collisions involving transport trucks.

Though Schmidt said that it is too soon to say what caused Friday’s collision, he described it as “tragically preventable.”

“Officers are on their way right at this moment to knock on someone’s door to give them a notification that no one wants to hear,” he said.