Waste management group Cleanaway has been fined a record $1.1 million over a truck crash that left one of its drivers with life-changing injuries and killed two other motorists.

Cleanaway breached the Commonwealth Work Health and Safety Act twice, the SA Supreme Court has found.

One of the company’s trucks hit three cars at an Adelaide intersection on August 18 2014.

The truck driver – who was just a week into his job – needed a leg amputating and broke his neck. Another survivor suffered a broken neck and back.

The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions filed charges in 2016.

Comcare, the national work health and safety regulator and workers’ compensation authority, says its investigation found Cleanaway’s driver training was inadequate.

“The company’s failures had devasting consequences,” CEO Colin Radford said.

“This was the driver’s first week in the job, and he was only trained on relatively flat roads in a truck with an automatic transmission.

“On the day of the collision, he was driving a manual heavy vehicle for the first time and had to navigate the descents of the Adelaide Hills.

“This created a clear and significant risk of injury or death. The obvious safeguard was for Cleanaway to have enforced a system of work that ensured the driver was supervised until he was experienced in operating a manual heavy vehicle in these conditions.”

The penalty is the largest imposed under the WHS Act.

Listed group Cleanaway is a licensed national employer in the Comcare scheme.