Daniel’s story · Daniel Platt, Co-founder and CEO

The sleep disorder nobody screened for.

Daniel’s father was killed by a driver with undiagnosed sleep apnoea who fell asleep at the wheel. Everything Daniel has built since starts there.

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7 October 2004

5:55am · Victoria, Australia Daniel’s father was driving to work on the same road he had done countless mornings before.

The driver opposite did not know he had sleep apnoea. Nothing in his life had asked the question, so nothing caught it. The cost of that gap was high, for everyone involved.

It is the pattern Daniel has seen repeated ever since: the person at the wheel passes every check they are required to pass, and none of those checks asks about sleep.

The driver opposite

Travelling in the opposite direction, the driver fell asleep and crossed into Daniel’s father’s lane, causing a high-speed head-on collision.

Undiagnosed sleep apnoea
Returning home from a night shift
Fell asleep at the wheel on an undivided 100 km/h road

Daniel’s father was airlifted to hospital, fighting for his life.

In just over a day, the family’s world had been shattered:Daniel’s father was gone.

Daniel’s family lost a father, a husband, a worker and a team-mate. Today he would also be a grandfather to Daniel’s children.

All of it was lost to a sleep disorder that nothing had screened for.

It was entirely preventable.

At work
At home
In life

Sleep and fatigue are not just wellness issues. They are also serious safety, legal and financial issues.

It is not a one-off

Daniel’s family is not alone. Each of these cases was published by investigators, courts or regulators in Australia, and each follows the same pattern: someone fell asleep, and an accident followed.

Aug 1996 · South Australia, Australia
Interstate driver on 7.5 hours' sleep in five days has microsleeps and kills six; jailed and denied compensation
- Safety
- Legal
An interstate semi-trailer driver drove about 5,400 km in five days, sleeping only about seven and a half hours and using stimulant pills to stay awake. For about 90 km before the crash site his truck weaved onto the wrong side of the road until it collided with two cars, killing six people. The state coroner found his driving was substantially caused by extreme fatigue resulting in microsleeps; he was jailed for death by dangerous driving, and the Workers Compensation Tribunal later refused his own injury claim because he kept driving knowing he was falling asleep.
Case AU-transport-25Report an issue
June 2017 · Victoria, Australia
Taxi driver with severe undiagnosed sleep apnoea hits aged-care minibus, three residents die; convictions quashed
- Safety
- Legal
A taxi driver carrying clients of a disability service drove through a rural give-way intersection without braking and struck a minibus taking nine aged-care residents home from a day trip; three of the elderly passengers died. Two hours later he was seen falling asleep and snoring in a busy hospital emergency department, and he was later diagnosed with very severe obstructive sleep apnoea (69 breathing stops an hour). He was convicted and jailed for six years, but the Court of Appeal quashed all the convictions because the jury could not exclude that his undiagnosed apnoea left him in microsleeps or diminished consciousness, so his driving may not have been conscious and voluntary.
Case AU-transport-35Report an issue
May 2016 · New South Wales, Australia
Worker drives colleagues home after a marathon restaurant opening, has micro-sleeps and crashes: two killed
- Safety
- Legal
After two short nights and a 4am start, a young worker spent all day at the opening of a new city restaurant and then drove four colleagues home late at night. He had a micro-sleep, kept driving to look for a safe place to stop, fell asleep again and hit a power pole, killing two passengers and seriously injuring a third. The Court of Criminal Appeal held the sentencing judge was wrong to find he was not sleep deprived, and that full-time custody should have been imposed, but declined to interfere with the community sentence because it was well under way.
Case AU-retail-02Report an issue
May 2017 · New South Wales, Australia
Logbook-compliant B-double driver keeps driving while dozing; head-on crash kills two boys
- Safety
- Legal
A B-double driver on a regular interstate run drifted into the oncoming lane repeatedly for more than half an hour in the early hours, correcting each time, before colliding with an oncoming car and killing two boys. His logbook was fully compliant with heavy vehicle work and rest limits and he had signed a fit-for-duty declaration, but he had worked almost 56 hours in five days and ignored his own warning signs and his employer's rule to stop if nodding off. Investigators found ten safe places he could have pulled over in the last 25 minutes. He was jailed for 3 years 6 months.
Case AU-transport-34Report an issue
Dec 2019 · New South Wales, Australia
Apprentice electrician falls asleep driving to an early-morning start and kills two cyclists; convictions ultimately quashed
- Safety
- Legal
A first-year apprentice electrician left home at 4.40 am for his usual early start. Minutes later he fell asleep, his car drifted across the road and hit two cyclists on the opposite shoulder, killing both. It was never disputed that he fell asleep. The trial judge acquitted him of dangerous driving because he honestly and reasonably believed he was fit to drive, but convicted him of negligent driving; the Court of Criminal Appeal then quashed that conviction as inconsistent and entered an acquittal, nearly four years after the crash.
Case AU-construction-05Report an issue
Dec 2021 · Victoria, Australia
Truck driver with sleep apnoea and work diary breaches ploughs into stopped traffic, killing a toddler: 12.5 years' jail
- Safety
- Legal
- Financial
A 43-tonne prime mover driver who had sleep apnoea, at most six hours' sleep opportunity the night before, and a history of work diary and rest-break breaches wandered across lanes on a major freeway for half an hour, alarming other motorists who wondered if he was asleep. He then ran into the back of slowed traffic at roadworks, killing a two-year-old girl and seriously injuring her parents. The court found beyond reasonable doubt that he was fatigued, knew his driving was badly impaired and chose to push on. He was jailed for 12 and a half years and also fined for the work diary and hours offences.
Case AU-transport-42Report an issue
Aug 2016 · South Australia, Australia
Paramedic with undiagnosed sleep apnoea falls asleep; patient dies in ambulance rollover
- Safety
- Legal
During an overnight patient transfer, an ambulance left the road at about 2:50 am, hit a tree and rolled; the patient died and two others were seriously injured. The paramedic driving told police he fell asleep, and was later diagnosed with severe obstructive sleep apnoea that an expert said was probably present at the time. The District Court of South Australia acquitted him of dangerous driving charges because it could not exclude that he fell asleep without warning due to the undiagnosed condition.
Case AU-emergency-01Report an issue
May 2023 · Victoria, Australia
Night-shift apprentice baker falls asleep driving home after 10 pm to 6 am shift; oncoming driver killed
- Safety
- Legal
An apprentice baker rostered on night shifts from 10 pm to 6 am, five nights a week, set off on his 42 km drive home just after finishing work. About 15 km from home he fell asleep, crossed the centre line and collided with an oncoming ute, killing its driver. He had slept less than usual that weekend and felt exhausted, but did not stop for the power nap he sometimes took. The court found he was fatigued and fell asleep, took into account expert evidence on how night shift affects alertness, and imposed a three-year community corrections order and licence disqualification.
Case AU-food-06Report an issue
Oct 2017 · Western Australia, Australia
Road train driver who disabled fatigue camera falls asleep; co-driver killed, driver jailed and carrier fined
- Safety
- Legal
- Financial
A road train left a remote highway, overturned and caught fire, killing the second driver who was resting in the sleeper cab. The in-cab fatigue detection camera had recorded repeated long eye closures in the months before and had then been deliberately moved out of position, generating 468 alerts that the transport company received in daily reports but never acted on. The driver was convicted of dangerous driving causing death and jailed, and the company was separately convicted under WA work health and safety law for failing to manage the fatigue hazard.
Case AU-transport-13Report an issue
May 2021 · Victoria, Australia
Tour minibus driver with poorly treated sleep apnoea dozes off; passenger killed, driver jailed
- Safety
- Legal
A minibus carrying a seniors' club on a silo art tour left the road in northern Victoria after the driver fell asleep, killing a passenger and leaving three others with life-threatening injuries. Passengers had seen the bus drift onto the gravel shoulder about 10 times that morning. The driver had had sleep apnoea since the mid-1990s, and his CPAP data showed only about four hours' use a night, heavy mask leakage and 22 breathing events an hour. He pleaded guilty in the County Court and was jailed.
Case AU-transport-19Report an issue

What he built alongside Melissa

Daniel co-founded Sleepfit Solutions in 2016 and spent nearly a decade as its Chief Technology Product Officer, designing and building the whole suite: sleep-disorder screening, organisational fatigue risk assessment, point-of-duty assessment and fatigue-related incident analysis.

He built the platform to ISO 27001 and was appointed CEO in 2026.

The impact so far

Every figure here comes from our own deployments or from independent research, and none names a client.

100,000+people have used our programs, across employers and government in Australia, the US, Europe and Asia.
62%of rail workers identified at elevated sleep-disorder risk took action toward treatment, in one rail operator deployment.
1,000+employees in a shift-working rail workforce completed a sleep assessment. A quarter came back for a second, a mean of 93 days later.
2independent studies from CQUniversity’s Appleton Institute found significant improvement in sleep health and insomnia severity after using Sleepfit.

Neither study was powered to establish efficacy against a control group.

How we grade our evidence

Twenty-two years on, my family is still living with what one undiagnosed sleep disorder took from us. I’ll do everything in my power to find it in the people who don’t know they have it, before it takes someone else’s loved one.

Daniel PlattCo-founder and CEO

Risk & Safety

The question an investigator will ask

In some Australian industries, screening for sleep disorders is already required: the national health standard for rail safety workers names the STOP-Bang questionnaire. Everywhere else, fatigue is a hazard you must identify and control, and after an incident you will be asked how you did it.

Melissa’s story · Founder

Sleep starts at home.

Melissa came to sleep at home, as a new parent: a daughter whose nights she was still learning to read, and a husband who lived with chronic insomnia. Everything she has built since starts there.

Back to About us

Find the undiagnosed sleep disorders in your workforce before an investigator does.

Tell us your industry and roughly how many people you employ. Your snapshot models how many are likely sleeping poorly and what it costs you. Then choose who you’d cover, and we’ll scope the right next step with you: a Fatiguefit Census where fatigue is a safety risk, or a proposal for a wellbeing program.

See your workforce snapshot

A sample workforce snapshot on a tablet: modelled sleep problems and the cost of poor sleep for 1,400 people in transport and logistics.