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Nine bodies, including that of a baby, lie in Tasmanian morgues after the state's worst single day of road fatalities in more than 20 years.
Six people had died in two separate head-on crashes on Thursday morning before three people, including a baby, were killed in a third accident as motorists headed home from work about 5.30pm (AEST).
Police say a woman driving a car that collided head-on with a truck on the Midland Highway at Mangalore, near Hobart, was killed before the B-double jackknifed, losing a shipping container that crushed a second car carrying a man and a baby.
Earlier, on Thursday morning, a mother and her son, a husband and his wife and their relative, and a man whose driving prompted calls to police all died in two separate head-on crashes within three hours of each other.
Police said they took two calls from motorists warning them about the dangerous speeding and overtaking of a 75-year-old Hobart man heading north on the Midland Highway.
Assistant Commissioner Phil Wilkinson said police were talking to the second caller as the man's sedan pulled out from behind a truck and ploughed into an oncoming car near Conara in the state's north.
A man and his wife, aged 48 and 41, and their 52-year-old male relative inside the oncoming car did not have time to brake, Mr Wilkinson said.
Both cars were travelling at top speeds on a straight stretch of highway at about 10.30am (AEST), he said.
Less than three hours earlier, on an icy road near Hobart, a 48-year-old mother and her 20-year-old son died when their sedan collided with a utility, police say.
The ute driver is being treated for non-life threatening injuries in the Royal Hobart Hospital.
Mr Wilkinson said icy road conditions were a factor in the double fatality.
The deaths bring the state's road toll to 48 this year.
At the same time last year it was 28, and 40 for the whole year.
Six people died in a single day on Tasmanian roads was in January 1989 when six youths were killed in a car that collided with a log truck at Swansea.
