The two young men and two young women, aged between 16 and 22, were driving from Byron Bay to Ballina on the Pacific Highway in the early hours of Wednesday when their Hyundai sedan crashed at Newrybar, just north of Ballina.
A 22-year-old woman was driving the 40km between the two coastal towns.
The noise of the crash woke locals.
"We were woken by a loud bang around 2am, then surrounded by helicopters for the next few hours," Newrybar resident Peter Siefken told AAP.
Inspector Nicole Bruce said they would have died almost instantly from their injuries.
She said the driver attempted to pass a B-double truck over double lines and then swerved to miss another oncoming truck.
"They missed the truck but lost control and heavily impacted with a tree almost splitting the car in half," she told AAP.
"It was fairly horrific."
All the victims were locals from the Ballina and Byron Bay area.
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