News
Findings, prosecutions and regulation changes on workplace fatigue in Australia, newest first.
Latest
June 2027
South Australian public hospitals face penalties for missing mandated ratios from 5 November 2027, when the moratorium ends. NSW is rolling out minimum nurse staffing in emergency departments, targeted for completion by June 2027. Safe Work Australia's review of the model WHS laws is with ministers, with no date set.
1 July 2027
Safe Work Australia's Best Practice Review of the model WHS laws was due to go to WHS ministers in August 2026. It is not yet public and no amendments are proposed, so no change date is set. NSW psychological injury compensation narrows again from 1 July 2027 (26% WPI threshold for ongoing weekly benefits).
23 December 2027
Amendments to the Maritime Labour Convention approved in June 2025 are expected to enter into force on 23 December 2027: shore leave, medical care guidance, repatriation and protection from harassment. Hours of rest are unchanged. Safe Work Australia's review of the model WHS laws is with ministers, with no date set.
Date not set
CASA has reviewed its pilot fatigue rules and plans consultation on improvements to CAO 48.1 across 2025-26, with cabin crew rules to follow. No draft changes or dates are published. Separately, Safe Work Australia's review of the model WHS laws is with ministers, with no change date set.
Date not set
If your fleet holds NHVAS fatigue accreditation (BFM or AFM), it runs alongside the new scheme for up to three years from 1 August 2026 and moves to Alternative Compliance Accreditation when it expires. Safe Work Australia's review of the model WHS laws is with ministers, with no change date set.
Date not set
Safe Work Australia's Best Practice Review of the model WHS laws was due to go to WHS ministers in August 2026. It is not yet public and no amendments are proposed, so no change date is set.
Date not set
The National Transport Commission's review of the HVNL regulations, including fatigue, is under way; industry has asked for a heavy recovery towing exemption, but no remade regulation is published. Safe Work Australia's review of the model WHS laws is with ministers, with no change date set.
Date not set
Your existing NHVAS accreditation runs alongside the new scheme for up to three years from 1 August 2026, and you move to General Safety or Alternative Compliance Accreditation when it expires. Work diary changes roll out gradually from August 2026. Safe Work Australia's review of the model WHS laws has no date set.
Regulation change · 1 Aug 2026
Not in WA or NT.
SourceRegulation change · 1 Aug 2026
BFM and AFM give way to an Alternative Compliance Hours standard.
SourceRegulation change · 1 Aug 2026
NSW codes are enforceable from 1 July 2026.
SourceRegulation change · 1 July 2026
Offshore rules are unchanged.
SourceRegulation change · 1 July 2026
Victoria's psychological health regulations apply from 1 December 2025.
SourceRegulation change · 1 July 2026
Victorian public employers have had psychological health regulations since 1 December 2025.
SourceRegulation change · 1 July 2026
From 1 July 2026 NSW requires you to follow approved codes, including fatigue.
SourceRegulation change · 27 Mar 2026
From 1 August 2026 the amended HVNL bars your drivers from driving while unfit, including fatigued.
SourceRegulation change · 27 Mar 2026
Story · Feb 2026 · Western Australia, Australia
A deckhand who had been working on a boat since the early hours was driving home about 14 hours later when he fell asleep at 100 km/h and veered into oncoming traffic, colliding head-on with a utility carrying a driver and two passengers, one of them a young child. The occupants of the other vehicle were taken to hospital. On appeal, the Supreme Court of Western Australia held the crash was foreseeable given the exhaustion he was suffering from his work, describing fatigue as a "silent killer on the roads", and resentenced him to a suspended prison term.
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Regulation change · 1 Jan 2026
Story · Jan 2026 · New South Wales, Australia
An elevated work platform operator working 12-hour shifts from 6 am in summer heat at a city construction site drove the company hire car straight home instead of returning it to the yard, saying he was too fatigued. The Fair Work Commission found that 'any person would be fatigued' working those conditions, and that the return-to-yard routine left only about eight hours before the next 4:30 am departure for meals, hygiene and sleep across consecutive days. The dismissal was held harsh, unjust and unreasonable and about 10 weeks' pay was ordered as compensation.
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Story · Jan 2026 · Western Australia, Australia
In 2026 the Western Australian Industrial Relations Commission, on its own motion, varied a state award for manufacturing, maintenance and metal trades. Ordinary hours now default to no more than eight a day, and 12-hour days are allowed only with union and majority agreement, proper health monitoring to manage employee fatigue, suitable rosters and supervision. An outdated union code was replaced with a new code of conduct on twelve-hour shifts covering roster design, health surveillance and safe transport home for fatigued workers.
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Regulation change · 12 Dec 2025
Regulation change · 1 Dec 2025
Story · Dec 2025 · Australia (national award)
Employer groups, including a national industry association and a children and youth care provider, asked the Fair Work Commission to confirm that a care worker's overnight sleepover could count as a break between two separate shifts. Unions opposed, relying on worker evidence of interrupted sleep and expert sleep evidence that 24 to 28 hour sleepover models risk fatigue-related impairment. The Full Bench decided a sleepover cannot properly be treated as a break from work, so work before and after it is one shift. By agreement, that shift can run to 12 ordinary hours, with no more than 8 hours on either side of the sleepover.
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Regulation change · 1 Nov 2025
Story · Nov 2025 · Queensland, Australia
A licensed aircraft maintenance engineer working a four-on, four-off roster capped at 76 hours a fortnight also worked casual shifts of about 11 hours for another airline on his days off, without written approval. The Commission found no evidence the extra work caused actual fatigue or any safety incident, and that the dismissal was unfair. But it refused reinstatement partly because the employer could not apply its fatigue management policy without knowing his other hours, and it reduced compensation for the non-disclosure.
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Story · Oct 2025 · Tasmania, Australia
After a late-night flight was rescheduled, the national airport rescue and firefighting service proposed replacing the 18-hour shifts of its rescue firefighters at a Tasmanian airport with two 9.5-hour shifts a day on a four-on, two-off pattern. The union said the agreement required fatigue management to be fully considered and that this had not happened. The Commission found the witness statements about fatigue compliance lacked substance and questioned why a fatigue model had not been used when the rosters were designed, but held that running the model before the hearing remedied the gap, so the roster complied with the agreement.
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Story · Oct 2025 · New South Wales, Australia
A concrete agitator truck driver was dismissed in 2025 for timesheet issues, pre-start checks and breaching heavy vehicle fatigue management requirements by not logging his first rest break until 6.57 am, outside the allowed window. The Fair Work Commission found he had in fact taken the break in time, that app connectivity problems contributed to the missing record, and that failing to record a break within the first five and a half hours of the shift was a serious error. A one-off record-keeping breach warranted training or counselling, not dismissal, so the Commission ordered reinstatement with lost pay.
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Story · Oct 2025 · New South Wales, Australia
A security surveillance officer guarding urban rail sites on night shift was found asleep in his car at about 1 am during an authorised crib break, shortly after dealing with a disruptive incident, and was summarily dismissed nine days later. The Fair Work Commission found there was a valid reason but that dismissal was unfair because the sleep was unintentional, happened during a permitted break, was a one-off, and the officer had an unblemished record. The employer was ordered to pay five weeks' pay plus superannuation.
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Story · June 2025 · New South Wales, Australia
A maintenance contractor for a metropolitan passenger rail network changed its roster so that workers did 19 night shifts in 12 weeks instead of 16. Eight maintainers refused to work night shifts, citing the risk of microsleeps at work and driving home. An independent assessment found the roster exceeded the moderate fatigue index level but stayed below the high level, and the employer offered cab vouchers for travel home. The Commission found the risk was not imminent and ordered the workers to stop unprotected industrial action while consultation on the roster continued.
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Story · May 2025 · Queensland, Australia
The master of a reef and island tour vessel was found asleep for 20 to 30 minutes on a ledge above the helm, snoring within earshot of guests, after taking over-the-counter sleeping tablets the night before his shift; a guest asked a crew member what was wrong with the skipper. Days later he had to be woken by crew after a break. The Fair Work Commission said it was 'of concern' that he presented for work knowing he had taken sleeping pills and that the fitness for work policy required him to be fit for duty, and found a valid reason for dismissal. Because the employer cut short his chance to respond, he was awarded about $5,200 compensation.
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Story · Apr 2025 · New South Wales, Australia
A contact centre operator working 10 pm to 8 am night shifts was found asleep during a night shift and had to be woken by a supervisor so that customer chats were answered, and on other occasions overslept before night shifts and arrived late without notice. The employer moved the operator from night shift to afternoon shift, with a pay cut, as an alternative to dismissal. After further misconduct the operator was dismissed, and the Fair Work Commission found the dismissal was not harsh, unjust or unreasonable, noting that night shift work requires different sleep patterns and routines.
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Story · Mar 2025 · Queensland, Australia
A truck driver towing two empty trailers left a rural highway and rolled the prime mover before dawn. He had been waking every half hour with breathing problems, had sleep apnoea identified years earlier but did not use his treatment machine, and had moved to day driving because he knew he struggled with fatigue. The coroner found the crash resulted from a combination of fatigue, speeding, not wearing a seat belt and drug driving, and endorsed recommendations for driver monitoring systems, electronic work diaries and sleep-health education for heavy vehicle drivers.
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Story · Jan 2025 · Commonwealth offshore waters, Australia
Workers on an offshore construction vessel told the offshore regulator that fatigue was affecting their work, with noise in cabins and living areas a contributing factor. The National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority found accommodation noise from the propulsion system was at or above recommended limits and that fatigue was a substantial risk that could result in operator error. It issued an improvement notice requiring a specialist noise assessment, workforce consultation and engineering controls within 180 days.
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Story · Sept 2024 · New South Wales, Australia
A senior registered nurse worked full-time day shifts as a hospital nursing unit manager while also working two or three night shifts a week as the only registered nurse at an aged care facility, and running a care business. Allegations that she slept on shift were not proven, but the tribunal found that working this way meant she started her day job with little or no sleep, created an unacceptable risk to patients, and breached the nursing code duty to act to reduce the effect of fatigue. She was cautioned and ordered to pay part of the prosecution's costs.
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Story · July 2024 · Victoria, Australia
A union took a dispute to the Fair Work Commission over whether a grocery wholesaler's enterprise agreement required a 12-hour break between all periods of work, or only between shifts of ordinary hours. Workers at the cold storage warehouse worked 10-hour shifts of packing and forklift work in a chilled environment. The Commission accepted that the clause exists to give employees adequate breaks to rest and manage fatigue, and held that the 12-hour break applies after overtime as well, with overtime rates payable when the break is cut short - even when the worker agrees to a shorter break.
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Story · July 2024 · Offshore Victoria, Australia
Operations technicians on an offshore gas platform reported to the operator and the regulator that mental and physical fatigue was affecting their work and home life, citing workload and insufficient staff. The National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority found the operator's immediate and preventive controls were not agreed or proven effective and that planned measures did not reduce the risk as low as reasonably practicable. It ordered an independent assessment of staffing levels and implementation of controls within 180 days.
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Story · July 2024 · Queensland, Australia
A mining company began a six-month trial of a 7-on/7-off roster of 12.5-hour shifts in the load and haul department at a Queensland coal mine, which includes a run of seven consecutive night shifts. The mining union argued the roster was the most fatiguing option under the Queensland fatigue guidance note and that drivers commuting after the last shift were at risk. The Fair Work Commission found the trial could proceed, relying on the employer's workplace risk assessment, which used a third-party fatigue expert, and its compliance with fatigue management standards.
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Story · June 2024 · Victoria, Australia
A service technician who disclosed sleep apnoea and was hired on the understanding he would work minimal overtime was repeatedly asked to work overtime. He complained in writing about overtime and fatigue, reported being exhausted, and gave evidence of nearly having a car accident driving home. After he resigned, the Commission found the employer's repeated overtime requests were unreasonable, ignored its own fatigue management policy and posed a real risk to his health and safety, and that his resignation was a forced dismissal.
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Story · Mar 2024 · Western Australia, Australia
At 4:37 am on the fourth consecutive night shift, a mining company's iron ore train was set in motion and struck the rear of a stationary ore train at about 12 km/h in a port rail yard. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau found the driver had been under stress, sleeping with the light on and waking often, so sleep quality was very poor even though total sleep hours looked adequate. The driver was in a degraded state of alertness, possibly a microsleep, and acknowledged four vigilance alerts without any awareness or memory of doing so, which stopped the automatic penalty brake from applying.
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Story · Mar 2024 · New South Wales, Australia
The only registered nurse on night shift at an aged care facility slept on duty on several shifts, on one occasion for more than four hours, and residents missed medication while care tasks were left to assistants in nursing. The NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal found professional misconduct and cancelled the nurse's registration. The decision stressed that being rostered and present is not enough - nurses must be alert, capable and safe to practise at all times - and highlighted obligations around secondary employment.
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Story · Nov 2023 · Queensland, Australia
A detention services officer assigned to keep a vulnerable detainee under constant line-of-sight monitoring was recorded on CCTV sitting back on a sofa in sunglasses, motionless for about 24 minutes, and needed two taps on the shoulder to respond. The Fair Work Commission found he had fallen asleep while tired and had failed to take adequate steps to stay awake, which was especially serious in a high-risk detention setting. The dismissal for serious misconduct was upheld.
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Story · Nov 2023 · Australia
A regulator investigation of a heavy vehicle operator found 543 infringements across two periods in 2020 and 2022, including 44 work and rest (fatigue) offences, 93 false or misleading records and 406 speeding offences. The National Heavy Vehicle Regulator prosecuted the company for breaching its safety duty. It pleaded guilty and was ordered to adopt electronic work diaries and fatigue training.
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Story · Aug 2023 · Western Australia, Australia
A production supervisor at a Western Australian mine was dismissed after being found with his head on his arms in the crib room at about 1 am on night shift. The Fair Work Commission found he had fallen asleep and that this was misconduct, but held it did not justify dismissal - a warning would have been appropriate - and criticised the employer's investigation for failing to retrieve dashcam footage before substantiating a second allegation. The dismissal was found unfair.
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Story · July 2023 · Queensland, Australia
A military helicopter crashed off the Queensland coast, killing four defence force members. Comcare, the Commonwealth work health and safety regulator, formed the view that there were known risks to workers from fatigue and from the helmet display system, and that the defence force failed to implement available controls so far as reasonably practicable. It referred two briefs of evidence, including one on fatigue management, to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, which declined to prosecute.
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Story · June 2023 · New South Wales, Australia
After a charter bus crash in regional New South Wales killed 10 people and seriously injured 25, the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator prosecuted the bus company and its two directors. They pleaded guilty to Heavy Vehicle National Law safety duty breaches covering inadequate driver recruitment, failure to manage overspeed in a timely way, and fatigue management failings. The court fined the company $650,000 and each director $12,000, with proceedings against two managers still pending.
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Story · June 2023 · Northern Territory, Australia
A highly experienced mustering pilot was killed when his light helicopter crashed on a cattle station. The ATSB found he had flown on all but 19 of the previous 90 days, with over 170 hours of duty in the previous 30 days, and the crash happened on his 14th consecutive day of duty. The coroner found that pilot fatigue, human error or incapacitation could not be excluded as contributory factors, and recommended that the aviation regulator and the helicopter industry association do more to improve compliance and safety culture in mustering operations.
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Story · June 2023 · New South Wales, Australia
A rail protection officer in New South Wales, responsible for keeping track workers safe, worked day and night shifts almost back-to-back without the mandatory 11-hour break three times, and worked beyond the 12-hour maximum twice. The national rail safety regulator prosecuted him under the Rail Safety National Law. He pleaded guilty, and a judge dismissed his appeal against the fine, calling the offences very serious.
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Story · May 2023 · Victoria, Australia
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.
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Story · May 2023 · Tasmania, Australia
A Tasmanian logging company's heavy vehicle operations recorded 251 fatigue-related breaches over 12 months that neither the company nor its director detected. The National Heavy Vehicle Regulator prosecuted both under the Heavy Vehicle National Law, and the court imposed fines and two supervisory orders to fix fatigue management and training.
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Story · Apr 2023 · Victoria, Australia
A specialist anaesthetist providing general anaesthesia in dental clinics was filmed by a nurse asleep in the operating room during surgery, after earlier allegations of falling asleep at another workplace. He attributed it to stress, poor sleep and fatigue from personal circumstances. The tribunal said falling asleep during anaesthesia is never acceptable and that anaesthetists must recognise and manage fatigue so it never affects patient safety, and it refused to lift the condition requiring another doctor on site whenever he practises.
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Story · Mar 2023 · Queensland, Australia
A disability services provider was required to provide two awake support workers around the clock for an NDIS participant with complex needs who was known to leave the house. In the early hours one night-shift worker was asleep in the living room and the other did not check when the back door opened; the participant walked onto a highway and was struck and killed by a vehicle. The Federal Court found the provider had a course of conduct in which support workers were asleep on duty despite complaints from the family, and ordered a $2.2 million civil penalty.
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Story · Feb 2023 · South Australia, Australia
Over about five months in 2023 a rail freight operator kept 22 long-distance train drivers working past their enterprise agreement shift limits (9, 12 or 15 hours depending on crew make-up) because of foreseeable delays such as slow refuelling, temporary speed restrictions and equipment failures. The South Australian Employment Tribunal held that shift limits cap the actual time worked, not just rostered time, and that these delays were not emergencies. It found seven serious contraventions, the worst exceeding the limit by 3 hours 20 minutes.
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Story · Jan 2023 · Queensland, Australia
During a 4 am freight approach to a regional Queensland airport in darkness and low cloud, a four-engine jet freighter descended well below the minimum safe altitudes, reaching about 602 ft above the ground before the crew climbed away after a terrain warning. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau found both pilots were likely fatigued because of the time of the approaches and inadequate sleep, with each pilot below the operator's own minimum sleep policy in the previous 48 hours. Rosters complied with regulations but were irregular, with no pattern of start times, which disrupted the crew's sleep.
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Story · Jan 2023 · Victoria, Australia
A young worker with long-standing insomnia got up at 5 am and set off on his routine drive to work on his second day back after a holiday break. A following driver saw his car waver and run onto the gravel shoulder - early microsleeps - but he drove on with the windows open, then blacked out at about 70 km/h and ran into the back of a car waiting to turn, pushing it into oncoming traffic and killing a passenger. A jury rejected a cardiac blackout defence and accepted that a microsleep caused the crash, and the judge stressed that the earlier microsleep was a warning to stop and rest.
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Story · Jan 2023 · New South Wales, Australia
A heavy vehicle driver inspected at a regional NSW heavy vehicle safety station in 2023 had worked 19.5 hours in a 24-hour period, against a solo-driver maximum of 12, and his longest rest break in that time was 90 minutes. The National Heavy Vehicle Regulator prosecuted the two critical-risk fatigue breaches, and the driver was convicted and fined.
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Story · Dec 2022 · Queensland, Australia
At about 5:15 am, at the end of a 10 pm to 6 am shift, an approach controller responsible for the terminal airspace around a north Queensland regional airport was found asleep across two chairs at the workstation, leaving the airspace without an active controller for an unknown period. No aircraft were affected because traffic was very light. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau found the controller fell asleep because of the time of day, very low workload, a roster of multiple consecutive night shifts with reduced rest between blocks, and practices that increased the risk of sleep. It also found that rostering relied on short-notice tactical changes, so cumulative fatigue was not being managed strategically, and that supervisors were not treating low workload as a fatigue hazard.
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Story · Dec 2022 · New South Wales, Australia
A regional line-haul operator running 32 fatigue-regulated trucks, and its two schedulers, pleaded guilty to Heavy Vehicle National Law safety-duty offences for having no system to check drivers' fitness for duty, no safe driving plans, no fatigue training and no control of work and rest hours. The Local Court fined the company $15,000, but on appeal by the state transport agency the Supreme Court found those penalties manifestly inadequate. The court held that fatigue is a major contributor to road deaths and that the absence of any crash during the period carried little weight, raising the company's fine to $180,000 and each scheduler's to $15,000.
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Story · Dec 2022 · New South Wales, Australia
A transport company, its managing director and a scheduler were sentenced in the NSW Supreme Court in 2022, the first Supreme Court judgment on primary duty offences under the Heavy Vehicle National Law. The regulator's prosecution established they had failed to ensure adequate systems to manage driver fatigue, speed and compliance with work and rest hours.
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Story · Oct 2022 · South Australia, Australia
Following a state police investigation, the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator prosecuted an interstate transport company and its former director after records showed drivers regularly failed to take their minimum rest and made false work diary entries. The director pleaded guilty to failing to exercise due diligence and became the first person banned from any transport activity under a Heavy Vehicle National Law prohibition order. The company was convicted of breaching its primary safety duty.
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Story · Oct 2022 · Victoria, Australia
A tram operator replaced its alternating morning and afternoon roster for more than 1,000 tram drivers with a 20-week graduated, forward-rotating roster, citing fatigue risk under rail safety law, a safety assessment and a national rail safety regulator audit. Drivers argued the change would make shift swapping harder and could worsen their fatigue. The Fair Work Commission found the new roster brings substantial fatigue risk improvements and refused to stop it.
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Story · Aug 2022 · Victoria, Australia
A delivery driver for a Victorian bakery was killed in a crash in regional Victoria in 2022. WorkSafe Victoria's prosecution established he had driven the same 796 km overnight run for 17 consecutive nights, most with shifts over 12 hours, without adequate breaks, and that the company had no fatigue controls on rest, hours or training.
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Story · Aug 2022 · New South Wales, Australia
A protection officer looking after track work on a regional main line allowed an excavator onto the line before a passenger train had cleared the work area, and the train stopped short of the machine. The Office of Transport Safety Investigations found the protection officer lost situational awareness through high workload, fatigue and a noisy, distracting worksite, after the team had worked nine days straight under a contract of 10 hours a day for 10 consecutive days with no provision for rest days. Neither the track manager nor the contractor had considered fatigue when the contract was let or during the work.
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Story · May 2022 · Victoria, Australia
A professional truck driver on a linen delivery and collection run started at 4 am and drove from the city to a regional centre and on to several coastal towns. At midday he texted that he was 'tired as hell' and would take a power nap; instead he used methamphetamine to stay awake, and at 5.30 pm his fully laden truck hit the back of a small car waiting to turn right, killing the passenger and seriously injuring the driver. Phone records showed limited sleep over the preceding days and weeks of texts about double vision and falling asleep at the wheel. The court found he was acutely fatigued, knew it, and chose to drive on.
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Story · Apr 2022 · Queensland, Australia
A commercial fishing vessel ran aground on a reef off Queensland a week into a voyage. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority found the master had been continuously on watch or on call for six days, with only about four hours of proper rest during the whole trip, and was resting in the galley rather than his cabin because he doubted the deckhands' competence. The authority detained the vessel after it was refloated and identified failures in the operator's risk assessment and safety management.
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Story · Apr 2022 · Victoria, Australia
A youth development worker at a facility for young people was dismissed after a resident complaint, an audit and a review of CCTV found that on numerous night shifts he had been asleep or watching television instead of attending to his duties. He accepted that he was required to work an active night shift, that sleeping on shift was unacceptable and that he may have fallen asleep while lying down. The Fair Work Commission refused his late unfair dismissal application and observed that the employer was likely to be able to show a valid reason for the dismissal.
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Story · Feb 2022 · Victoria, Australia
A newly admitted solicitor at a small law firm was required in her first three weeks to work extended shifts including periods of about 24 hours, overnight work in a shared hotel room, and work through to 5.30 am. The Magistrates' Court found the hours unreasonable under the Fair Work Act maximum weekly hours rule, that her capacity to obtain a reasonable amount of sleep was impeded, and that the hours contributed to worsening a pre-existing medical condition. The firm was ordered to pay unpaid wages and later penalties, with the court describing the hours contravention as particularly egregious.
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Story · Jan 2022 · New South Wales, Australia
A dangerous goods fuel tanker driver worked an 18-hour shift after being directed to make extra deliveries, and was later dismissed partly for breaching fatigue management laws. The Commission found the employer had previously tolerated and encouraged drivers to exceed fatigue limits and had never told them its approach had changed, so the long shift was not a valid reason for dismissal. The dismissal was unfair and compensation was ordered.
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Story · Dec 2021 · New South Wales, Australia
An inexperienced agricultural spray pilot stalled while turning for the next spray run and crashed; the aircraft caught fire and the pilot was killed. It was the pilot's ninth consecutive day of duty, with more than 30 hours flown in the previous four days and 12 to 13 hour duty days. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau found the mishandled turn was probably due to high workload and fatigue from long flight and duty times, combined with inexperience, task complexity and weather.
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Story · Dec 2021 · Victoria, Australia
In 2021 a Victorian operator's heavy vehicle collided with several light vehicles, killing a two-year-old child and seriously injuring others. The regulator's investigation that followed found the company's drivers had committed 202 fatigue-related breaches in two months and that timesheets were never checked. The company and its director were convicted of safety duty offences.
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Story · Dec 2021 · Victoria, Australia
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.
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Story · Nov 2021 · South Australia, Australia
A heavy vehicle driver in South Australia worked 15 hours in a 24-hour period, breaching the fatigue rules, and faced six fatigue charges. Following the regulator's prosecution, a South Australian court imposed a suspended fine and a supervisory order requiring the driver to buy and use an electronic work diary for 12 months.
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Story · Nov 2021 · Tasmania, Australia
A Tasmanian freight and transport company instructed its drivers to keep driving beyond their maximum standard work hours, a prohibited request that created fatigue risk. Prosecuted by the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator, it was fined and became the first company placed under a court-ordered supervisory intervention order, requiring onsite chain-of-responsibility training by an expert for 12 months.
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Story · Nov 2021 · South Australia, Australia
Doctors in a public paediatric emergency department imposed work bans over staffing they said was unsafe for patients and staff. About 40 paediatricians had written to the hospital board and the Premier describing themselves as overworked and fatigued. The health network asked the SA Employment Tribunal to prohibit the bans. The Tribunal accepted evidence of junior doctors' fatigue and burnout, 10-hour shifts without breaks and the resulting risk of errors, found the bans were likely to reduce the very concerning fatigue on staff, and declined to stop them.
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Story · Oct 2021 · New South Wales, Australia
A casual rear-lift waste collection driver was dismissed for falsifying run sheets to hide short and missed fatigue breaks, including one 12.75-hour shift with only two 15-minute breaks. The Fair Work Commission found the falsification was a valid reason for dismissal, but that supervisors had planned routes without proper breaks, told him to defer his break to fix a broken truck, signed off non-compliant run sheets and were never disciplined. Because the company's zero-tolerance fatigue policy was not applied in practice and only the driver was singled out, the dismissal was unfair and compensation was ordered.
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Story · Sept 2021 · Victoria, Australia
A B-double driver employed by a regional transport company ran into a stationary car waiting to turn into a highway rest stop, pushing it into oncoming traffic and killing two people. Before the crash he had taken only about five hours' continuous rest instead of the required seven and had recorded false start times in his work diary. The judge said fatigue could not be ruled out but made no formal finding of actual fatigue, and jailed the driver for dangerous driving with separate convictions and fines for the Heavy Vehicle National Law breaches.
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Story · Sept 2021 · Western Australia, Australia
A dangerous goods driver hauling fuel to remote mine sites on a four-on, three-off roster of up to 14 hours a day took 11 shifts with two other transport companies over about six months without written permission. Because his employer did not know about the extra hours, they were not allowed for in his scheduled work and rest periods. The Fair Work Commission found this breached the employer's fatigue management rules, put other employees at risk and was a valid reason for dismissal.
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Story · Aug 2021 · New South Wales, Australia
A self-employed semi-trailer driver was badly injured when his truck left a narrow rural road, dropped into a culvert and struck a power pole while he was working. The insurer argued he had simply fallen asleep at the wheel, relying on a crash reconstruction expert. The commission rejected the fatigue theory because the driver and his wife gave evidence of a good night's sleep and the truck's path showed active steering rather than the gradual drift expected of a sleeping driver, and it assessed damages of $1,011,729.
Case AU-transport-53Report an issue
Story · Aug 2021 · South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales, Australia
A regulator fatigue investigation into a multinational logistics company found drivers on interstate and regional NSW runs had falsified work diaries to show rest breaks during work hours and exceeded maximum work time by up to three hours in 24. The regulator found the company's tight scheduling and poor auditing allowed these critical risk breaches, and issued an improvement notice.
Case AU-transport-08Report an issue
Story · May 2021 · Victoria, Australia
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
Story · Mar 2021 · Victoria, Australia
Thirty class actions on behalf of about 12,800 junior doctors alleged that 36 Victorian public health services failed to pay for unrostered overtime, in breach of industrial instruments and the Fair Work Act. The health services settled in 2025 and the Federal Court approved the deal, with $135 million for doctors plus legal and administration costs, about $173-175 million in total. The doctors' union said excessive unpaid overtime leads to fatigue, ill health, burnout and an increased risk of clinical error.
Case AU-healthcare-05Report an issue
Story · Feb 2021 · Victoria, Australia
A trainee heavy vehicle driver on a five-nights-a-week overnight changeover run drove at about 98 km/h, without braking, into a B-double queued at a state border and died in the fire that followed. Two days earlier the truck's driver monitoring system had verified a drowsiness event in which he appeared to fall asleep at the wheel, and a housemate said he was getting about 3 to 4 hours of sleep a day. The coroner found the crash should have been avoidable by an alert driver but held there was insufficient evidence to find fatigue was a contributory factor, finding unexplained driver error the most likely cause. Police found the employer had deficient practices for managing fatigue and distraction events flagged by the monitoring system and issued an improvement notice.
Case AU-transport-68Report an issue
Story · Jan 2021 · Queensland, Australia
An aeromedical rescue helicopter pilot was moved from his usual roster to a 'touring' roster of seven 24-hour shifts on, which could require two duty periods of almost 10 hours each with a 4-hour break between them. He raised fatigue and safety concerns and gave three months' notice that he wanted to return to his normal roster, but the operator used a COVID-era JobKeeper direction to keep him on it, then dismissed him over the tone of his emails. The Commission found the direction was, for the pilot, basically a direction to work unsafely, found there was no valid reason for dismissal and ordered compensation.
Case AU-aviation-08Report an issue
Story · Jan 2021 · Queensland, Australia
A senior emergency specialist at a regional hospital was dismissed by the state health service after behaving aggressively towards two colleagues during a busy shift. He had finished a demanding late shift with no rostered break the night before and had about two hours' sleep before returning to work. The industrial commission accepted he was exhausted and fatigued, found the employer had wrongly discounted fatigue because it was not caused by the roster, and held the dismissal unfair - ordering reinstatement with back pay. The case shows fatigue at the point of duty is a live factor in conduct and discipline decisions, and that staff rarely report it.
Case AU-healthcare-14Report an issue
Story · 2021 · Australia
A team leader in a disability accommodation service was recorded on CCTV sleeping on shift and failed to give a resident required insulin medication. She said fatigue from excessive working hours caused her to sleep, and disputed the length (60 rather than 90 minutes). The Fair Work Commission found neither period acceptable, held the conduct created serious and imminent risks to residents' health and safety, and upheld the dismissal.
Case AU-agedcare-04Report an issue
Story · 2021 · Queensland, Australia
A mental health worker on a return-to-work placement had to drive about 90 minutes each way between two regional towns. She told the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission she was extremely fatigued on arrival and on the way home and sometimes pulled over so as not to fall asleep, and sought to have leave taken on fatigue and weather days reinstated. The Commission upheld the refusal because she had not raised safer working-day options with her supervisors and had no medical evidence the travel was unsafe, but said she should have been paid for the extra travel time.
Case AU-alliedhealth-03Report an issue
Story · Dec 2020 · New South Wales, Australia
A casual disability support worker was driving her own car to a client's home for an overnight shift when, by her own account, she drifted into a microsleep and the car left the highway and became airborne, injuring her back. She claimed workers compensation, arguing that her many recent shifts caused the fatigue behind the microsleep. The Personal Injury Commission found there was no specialist evidence linking work-related fatigue to the microsleep and ruled the journey was not compensable.
Case AU-agedcare-03Report an issue
Story · Nov 2020 · New South Wales, Australia
A glass fabrication worker hurt his lower back moving sheets of glass. During a year off work his weight rose from about 65 kg to 98 kg, and he developed snoring, witnessed apnoeas, daytime sleepiness and one episode of falling asleep at the wheel. A sleep study confirmed obstructive sleep apnoea along with pain-related insomnia. The employer appealed, arguing that the sleep-related impairment came from back pain rather than from the injury itself. The state Personal Injury Commission's medical appeal panel held that the OSA was caused by weight gain following the work injury and materially contributed to his impairment, so it could not be carved out. The panel confirmed 12% whole person impairment for the sleep condition, giving 17% combined with the spine.
Case AU-manufacturing-09Report an issue
Story · Oct 2020 · Western Australia, Australia
A professional truck driver who had been working night driving shifts for about two months agreed to fill in for a sick colleague on an afternoon run, towing an empty fuel tanker on a major highway. Becoming fatigued, he repeatedly drifted across the double white lines, twice narrowly missing oncoming vehicles, and CCTV captured him with his eyes closed. He pleaded guilty to dangerous driving and was fined, and the Supreme Court of Western Australia refused his bid to have the conviction made spent, noting the public interest in future employers being able to see his driving history.
Case AU-transport-67Report an issue
Story · Aug 2020 · South Australia, Australia
Two drivers for a Western Australian transport company were stopped in regional South Australia after driving eight consecutive days without the required 24-hour rest break. The regulator's prosecution found their depot manager had told them to lose their work diaries and keep driving. He pleaded guilty and was convicted.
Case AU-transport-07Report an issue
Story · Aug 2020 · Queensland, Australia
A truck driver on a basic fatigue management linehaul run told his employer he needed to sleep rather than take his truck to the depot for maintenance. His fatigue claim prompted an investigation that cross-checked his work diary against GPS records and found he had incorrectly recorded trips nine times, leaving 34 km of driving unrecorded, in breach of the Heavy Vehicle National Law. He was dismissed and offered to destroy the false records. The court rejected his claim that the dismissal was retaliation for raising fatigue.
Case AU-transport-82Report an issue
Story · Aug 2020 · Queensland, Australia
A Queensland trucking company's two drivers breached their fatigue hours 22 and 14 times in GPS-tracked trucks after the company failed to schedule compliant journeys or monitor its GPS data. Following a regulator investigation, the company was found guilty of breaching its primary safety duty, the first Queensland prosecution under the 2018 chain of responsibility changes.
Case AU-transport-06Report an issue
Story · July 2020 · Queensland, Australia
A pilot ferrying a single-engine turboprop on a long flight within Queensland fell asleep in cruise, overflew the destination and could not be contacted by air traffic control for about 40 minutes before waking and landing safely at another airport. The pilot had slept poorly the night before and had a long travel day with little water. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau found the pilot's ability to stay awake was likely reduced by fatigue combined with mild hypoxia from not using supplemental oxygen properly.
Case AU-aviation-03Report an issue
Story · July 2020 · Queensland, Australia
A Queensland haulage company carting large rocks from a gold mine to a port construction project paid its drivers a generous hourly rate and accepted their weekly hours claims without question, while eight drivers racked up dozens of critical and severe fatigue-hours breaches every week on public roads. The breaches came to light only after an unrelated rollover. The court held the company had encouraged the drivers' non-compliance, failed to stop it and fined it $1.2 million - a penalty it accepted might be beyond the company's means - to deter the industry.
Case AU-transport-41Report an issue
Story · July 2020 · New South Wales, Australia
A helicopter pilot conducting aerial weed spraying struck a powerline during the fifth spray load and was killed when the helicopter crashed. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau found the pilot had not carried out an aerial check of known hazards, including that powerline. It also found the pilot had been diagnosed with severe obstructive sleep apnoea six months earlier but was not effectively managing it, had not used the CPAP machine in the weeks before the accident or taken it to the job, and had not disclosed the condition to the aviation regulator. Investigators could not determine whether the pilot was impaired at the time, but untreated severe sleep apnoea is known to affect attention and memory.
Case AU-aviation-06Report an issue
Story · June 2020 · New South Wales, Australia
A long-serving hospital porter and cleaner who had worked afternoons for decades was moved to night shift and then told he would rotate to days. He reported he could not sleep after night shifts and that his body could not adjust, and on one drive home he was so exhausted that he blacked out and clipped a gutter. The Personal Injury Commission found his psychological injury was caused by the stressful working conditions that began when he went onto night shift, first showing in that near-crash, and that the hospital's actions were not reasonable, so weekly compensation and medical expenses were awarded.
Case AU-healthcare-09Report an issue
Story · Apr 2020 · Victoria, Australia
A heavy vehicle struck and killed four police officers at a roadside intercept on a Victorian freeway in 2020. In prosecutions by the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator after a police taskforce investigation, the interstate operator and its national operations manager were convicted of the most serious category of primary safety duty offence, with the regulator framing the outcome around driver fatigue management.
Case AU-transport-01Report an issue
Story · Apr 2020 · Victoria, Australia
A night-shift truck driver on probation, who had about five hours of potential rest in the 72 hours before the crash and had been using methylamphetamine, drifted repeatedly into the emergency lane before ploughing into four police officers at a roadside intercept, killing all four. A sleep physician told the court the sleep deprivation alone was comparable to a blood alcohol level well above 0.1 and, combined with drugs, had a multiplicative effect. The driver pleaded guilty to culpable driving particularised as negligent, fatigued and drug-affected driving and was jailed for 22 years.
Case AU-transport-40Report an issue
Story · Feb 2020 · Victoria, Australia
A truck carrying live chickens veered across the road near a regional city, hit trees and rolled back onto the roadway at 7.30 am. The driver was a job applicant whose overnight 'job interview' drive had started at 9.30 pm the night before. The National Heavy Vehicle Regulator prosecuted the operator and a supervisor for having no procedures to assess, monitor and manage drivers' fitness for duty, including training, and both pleaded guilty to Heavy Vehicle National Law safety duty offences.
Case AU-transport-18Report an issue
Story · Dec 2019 · New South Wales, Australia
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
Story · Dec 2019 · Australia (Indian Ocean territory)
Border protection marine crews joining large patrol vessels at a remote island travelled about 11 to 15 hours from their home cities, then woke around 3 am to join the ship. Crew evidence described two to six hours of broken sleep. The unions argued this breached the requirement for overnight rest after more than 12 hours' travel. The Commission accepted sleep is essential to fatigue management and that the rest period should likely be 7 to 10 hours, but found the existing rosters complied, while noting the crews could pursue the issue as a work health and safety matter elsewhere.
Case AU-maritime-11Report an issue
Story · Dec 2019 · Western Australia, Australia
At about 2 am an intermodal freight train passed a caution signal and then a stop signal and ran into the back of a stationary grain train, killing the freight train's driver. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau found the driver was likely fatigued from insufficient sleep in the previous 48 hours and from driving in the early-morning circadian low. It also found the operator relied on drivers self-reporting fatigue, with no proactive check that drivers had slept enough, and that the train's vigilance system could not detect an inattentive driver.
Case AU-rail-02Report an issue
Story · Oct 2019 · New South Wales, Australia
A commercial analyst at a fashion company emailed her manager complaining of working up to 16 hours a day plus weekends and of being so tired she was sleeping behind the wheel driving home late at night. She was dismissed during probation the day after a further complaint. The court found the company had not proved the complaints were not a reason for the dismissal and awarded compensation, but it rejected her separate claim under s 62 of the Fair Work Act because she did not prove the extra hours or any unreasonable request to work them.
Case AU-retail-07Report an issue
Story · Oct 2019 · Victoria, Australia
A truck driver and a co-driver hauling an excavator on an interstate run had covered 2,349 km in about 35 and a half hours with no proper opportunity to sleep. In the early hours the truck left a straight highway and hit a tree, killing the co-driver. The court found the overwhelming inference was that the driver fell asleep due to fatigue, and that he knew he was tired and should have stopped to rest. He was convicted of dangerous driving causing death, fined $15,000 and placed on a community corrections order.
Case AU-transport-57Report an issue
Story · Oct 2019 · South Australia, Australia
Two heavy vehicle drivers on standard hours were prosecuted by the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator after each worked well over the 12-hour limit in a 24-hour period (15 hours and 14.5 hours). A magistrate dismissed both charges as 'trifling', accepting the work diary instructions were confusing. On appeal the Supreme Court of South Australia held the diary was clear, that the hours limits exist to protect road users from impaired drivers, and that breaches in the 'critical risk' band could not be trifling. The dismissals were set aside and both drivers sent back for resentencing.
Case AU-transport-39Report an issue
Story · Sept 2019 · Queensland, Australia
A B-double driver carrying fresh fruit for a regional transport company veered off a major highway and rolled the truck at about 10 pm while trying to answer a mobile phone call, suffering very serious injuries. When the transport companies sued him for the loss, he argued that accumulated fatigue from pressure to skip rest breaks had impaired his judgment. The District Court of Queensland rejected this because his work diaries, pre-start fitness declarations and electronic fatigue monitoring data for the previous 14 days were all compliant, and it ordered him to pay $545,312.25 plus interest and costs.
Case AU-transport-81Report an issue
Story · Sept 2019 · New South Wales, Australia
In the early hours of the morning two paramedics from a state ambulance service attended a seven-year-old girl at home and decided not to take her to hospital; she died the next day of streptococcal pneumonia with sepsis. One paramedic had worked 18 to 20 hours since 8 am and the other was on call after the sixth day of an eight-day cycle. The coroner found the decision not to transport was against protocol and a missed opportunity, and recorded expert evidence, accepted by both paramedics, that fatigue was likely a contributing factor in their decision making.
Case AU-emergency-02Report an issue
Story · July 2019 · Victoria, Australia
An apprentice plumber who had not fallen asleep until about midnight got up at 5.30 am and drove to collect his employer for work. He felt tired, stopped for coffee, and had a split-second microsleep on the way but pressed on; he then fell asleep before an intersection, entered it against a red light and struck a cyclist riding to work, who died. The court found he knew he was tired and was probably anxious not to be seen as an unreliable employee, and that his decision to keep driving was fateful.
Case AU-construction-07Report an issue
Story · July 2019 · South Australia, Australia
At 10.30 pm a B-double truck veered off the main street of a country town in South Australia, uprooting seven trees before hitting a concrete fence, after the driver fell asleep. The magistrate said it was a miracle no vehicle or pedestrian was hit. The driver was fined, had his licence suspended, and the court noted he had lost his truck-driving job as a result.
Case AU-transport-17Report an issue
Story · Apr 2019 · New South Wales, Australia
On a morning harbour passenger service in a capital city, the ferry operator's operations manager boarded at a wharf along the route and found the engineer at the helm and the master asleep on a bench in the wheelhouse; the engineer said the master had been asleep for part of the route. The master blamed a codeine cough mixture taken against the dosage directions and missed heart medication, but gave no medical evidence. The Fair Work Commission upheld his dismissal, saying a ferry master asleep on duty on a public transport service 'cannot be countenanced'.
Case AU-maritime-08Report an issue
Story · Apr 2019 · Western Australia, Australia
A semi-trailer driver at work drove through a red light at about 12:49 pm and slammed into a car turning across the intersection, killing its driver. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter, and it was accepted he was impaired by fatigue. A sleep physician later diagnosed severe obstructive sleep apnoea, likely present for at least three years, and the Supreme Court of Western Australia found on the balance of probabilities that the driver had undiagnosed sleep apnoea at the time. The court also found earlier methylamphetamine use had disrupted his sleep the night before, and that he was not aware his capacity to drive was impaired when he started work.
Case AU-transport-38Report an issue
Story · Mar 2019 · South Australia, Australia
A carpenter who had worked about a 10-hour day and been awake nearly 16 hours drank several beers at a friend's place, then drove his employer's light truck home at night. He fell asleep, drifted entirely onto the wrong side of the road and hit an oncoming car head-on, killing its driver. A sleep specialist found he had an undiagnosed sleep disorder that left him chronically tired without realising it, but the courts gave this limited weight given the alcohol: he was jailed for five years and the Court of Appeal upheld the sentence.
Case AU-construction-04Report an issue
Story · Mar 2019 · Queensland, Australia
A suburban passenger train left a city station against a red departure signal, travelled about 305 metres past its authority and stopped beyond the point where it would have met another passenger train, which stopped about 70 metres short. The guard had given the right-away signal while the departure signal was still red. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau found that, after a roster clerk called at 10:08 pm to bring the guard's start forward to 4:12 am, the guard had only about 3 to 3.5 hours of sleep and was probably fatigued, although this was not found to have caused the event. It also found the operator had limited processes to manage restricted sleep after late-notice roster changes.
Case AU-rail-08Report an issue
Story · Jan 2019 · New South Wales, Australia
A support worker on an awake overnight shift in a residential home for people with intellectual and physical disabilities was found at about 4 am in a dark, closed office with a camp bed, pillow and doona laid out on the floor. The Fair Work Commission found the arrangement was 'tantamount to sleep preparation' and that he had put himself in a position to fall asleep when he was required to stay awake and alert for residents. The dismissal was upheld as fair.
Case AU-agedcare-02Report an issue
Story · Jan 2019 · Victoria, Australia
After concerns about after-hours security at a high-risk public housing estate, the security contractor placed a supervisor on a 7 pm to 3 am shift posing as a trainee. He heard one officer snoring in a back room and found officers asleep, in their cars or on breaks for most of the shift, with breaks taking about four of the eight hours. The Fair Work Commission found the officer had slept on duty and upheld his dismissal, calling sleeping on duty 'an inherently serious matter and a fundamental failing' for a security guard. Several other officers were also dismissed.
Case AU-security-06Report an issue
Story · 2019 · Victoria, Australia
A casual residential care worker worked a 10pm to 7am 'stand up' night shift, during which staff must stay awake to supervise a vulnerable young person in care. The Fair Work Commission found the worker fell asleep on shift on a number of occasions, at one point leaving a colleague locked out, and had told a supervisor he had returned from leave sleep deprived. The Commission held that sleeping on an awake shift was a serious breach that put the young person at serious risk of harm, and it dismissed the unfair dismissal claim despite procedural failings by the employer.
Case AU-agedcare-07Report an issue
Story · Dec 2018 · Victoria and New South Wales, Australia
A heavy vehicle driver and driver trainer for a national road freight company was scheduled on runs that left him unable to take his compulsory rest under fatigue management rules - on one run he was on duty for 22 hours with only a 1 hour 45 minute rest - and was asked to 'rescue' drivers who had run out of hours. The tribunal found that these fatigue-management events, which he dwelt on, contributed to a major depressive disorder that forced him off work in 2018. It overturned the insurer's denial and held he was entitled to workers' compensation.
Case AU-transport-51Report an issue
Story · Nov 2018 · Victoria, Australia
A professional truck driver hauling abattoir product in a fatigue-regulated heavy vehicle crossed onto the wrong side of a highway at night and hit a family car head-on, killing a mother and her son and seriously injuring two others. The court accepted that the driver had worked long hours with little rest in breach of work and rest rules, had not slept for 19 hours and had driven more than 14 hours that day, and was also affected by methamphetamine. The driver was jailed for 13 years for culpable driving causing death and related charges.
Case AU-transport-56Report an issue
Story · Nov 2018 · Tasmania, Australia
A single pilot flying an early-morning freight run fell asleep on autopilot and flew about 78 km past an island in Bass Strait before waking, while air traffic control tried repeatedly to make contact. The pilot had been awake for about 24 hours after being unable to sleep in a scheduled three-hour rest break, and the operator let the pilot keep flying the rest of the shift afterwards. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau found the pilot was acutely fatigued and that the operator's rosters were inconsistent and often changed at short notice.
Case AU-aviation-01Report an issue
Story · Nov 2018 · South Australia, Australia
A registered nurse with 25 years' service at a metropolitan public hospital received written warnings in 2016 and 2017 for falling asleep at work, and the hospital notified the national health practitioner regulator. A sleep study then found severe obstructive sleep apnoea, which was reported as well controlled with CPAP therapy, and the regulator imposed no practice restrictions. The health network suspended her for 14 months over concerns including somnolence at work and then dismissed her, but the tribunal found the dismissal harsh, unjust and unreasonable because the employer never sought her treating doctors' evidence, and ordered her re-employment with back pay.
Case AU-healthcare-13Report an issue
Story · Nov 2018 · Queensland, Australia
A mobile telephone exchange manager who supervised network sites for a telecommunications carrier was found asleep on the job by the customer. He lost a bonus and was placed on performance management, and later underwent a sleep study that confirmed severe obstructive sleep apnoea. He was dismissed after further performance and conduct issues, and the Fair Work Commission found the dismissal was not unfair, describing the sleeping incident as a serious issue that risked reputational damage to the employer.
Case AU-telecommunication-02Report an issue
Story · Oct 2018 · Queensland, Australia
An experienced operator at a Queensland coal mine had a microsleep at the wheel of a rear dump truck and mounted a bund beside the haul road. Instead of stopping, he checked the damage in his mirror and kept driving about 1.9 km before calling for someone to take over the truck. The event was classed as a high potential incident, and the Commission found his conduct 'alarming' and upheld the dismissal.
Case AU-mining-13Report an issue
Story · Oct 2018 · Queensland, Australia
A custodial correctional officer was dismissed after being found asleep on duty three times in 2018 and 2019 while guarding prisoners. The Queensland Industrial Relations Commission accepted medical evidence that the officer had undiagnosed, untreated severe obstructive sleep apnoea, which causes brief involuntary microsleeps the person may not be aware of. The commission found the officer had tried to stay alert and did not know he had fallen asleep, held the dismissal harsh, unjust and unreasonable, and ordered reinstatement with back pay.
Case AU-corrections-01Report an issue
Story · Sept 2018 · Western Australia, Australia
A WorkSafe WA audit of a machinery and portable-building haulage company found that over four months its commercial vehicle drivers did not take the breaks and non-work time required by WA's driver fatigue regulations, even though the company had GPS and fatigue spreadsheets that tracked their hours. The company was convicted on 24 charges and fined $89,000 plus costs.
Case AU-transport-16Report an issue
Story · July 2018 · New South Wales, Australia
At about 3:30 am, eight hours into a night shift at an open-cut mine, a haul truck ran into the back of a stopped truck at 41 km/h, trapping the driver, who suffered a fractured leg and eye injury. Truck data showed no steering, braking or retarder input before impact. The NSW Resources Regulator found the driver was unresponsive and that a microsleep or a medical episode was possible, and urged mines to use fatigue monitoring, encourage self-reporting, review rosters and fit collision avoidance.
Case AU-mining-03Report an issue
Story · July 2018 · Australian Capital Territory, Australia
A medium rigid tipper truck ran into the back of a family car waiting at traffic lights, killing a four-year-old boy. The driver had been referred for sleep studies in 2013 and 2017 for suspected sleep apnoea, had reported drowsiness to doctors, had felt more tired than usual in the days before, and never told his employer; after the crash he was diagnosed with very severe obstructive sleep apnoea. He pleaded guilty to culpable driving causing death and was jailed, and the territory coroner later called for mandatory reporting of drivers' health conditions and incentives for fatigue detection technology.
Case AU-transport-10Report an issue
Story · June 2018 · Australia
A national logistics company sought to extend an infrared in-cab system that tracks drivers' eyes, detects microsleeps and distraction, and sets off audio and seat-vibration alarms, alongside inward and outward facing video cameras. The union objected on eye-safety and privacy grounds. The company's evidence was that fatigue was a top-five safety risk for its dangerous-goods tanker fleet and that several serious incidents, including three in its linehaul fleet in six months, were likely caused by microsleeps. The Fair Work Commission ruled that the company had the right to roll the technology out as a reasonable step towards a safe system of work under the agreement's driver-fatigue clause.
Case AU-transport-37Report an issue
Story · June 2018 · Victoria, Australia
A commercial bin collection driver for a waste company swiped on at 4.09 am on a Monday after a weekend of partying and poor sleep, and told a co-worker over the radio he was still not over Saturday night. At about 10.35 am his truck drifted off the highway and struck a cyclist riding on the shoulder, who died. A sleep physician estimated his sleep had been cut well below his usual eight hours over the preceding nights, and the court found he likely fell asleep at the wheel, impaired by both sleep deprivation and methylamphetamine, despite having taken his required rest breaks during the shift.
Case AU-waste-03Report an issue
Story · Mar 2018 · Victoria, Australia
Just after 1 am, a roadside assist driver employed by a contractor was killed when his vehicle ran off the road and struck a tree. He had worked 89 hours of a 96-hour on-call shift and 17 hours straight since his first callout, and was seen to be visibly tired by the last motorist he helped. The County Court found fatigue was the reason the vehicle left the road, and the motoring organisation pleaded guilty to failing to protect its contractors' drivers from the risk of driving while fatigued, having provided no fatigue training or safe systems of work. It was convicted and fined $475,000.
Case AU-automotive-01Report an issue
Story · Jan 2018 · New South Wales, Australia
A professional truck driver employed by a Queensland transport company was hauling a wide load on a major highway after two short nights of sleep, alcohol the night before and undiagnosed sleep apnoea. The truck wandered in and out of its lane in the minutes before it struck a queue of vehicles stopped at roadworks, killing two young people and injuring several others. A jury rejected the driver's claim of a coughing blackout, and the District Court sentenced him on the basis that fatigue causing micro-sleeps caused the crash.
Case AU-transport-15Report an issue
Story · Jan 2018 · New South Wales, Australia
A metropolitan passenger train approached the end of the line at a suburban terminus without slowing and struck the buffer stop at about 35 km/h, injuring 16 people. Investigators found the driver made no control input for about 22 seconds before impact and considered a blackout, a microsleep from fatigue impairment, or inattention, but could not conclusively determine which. The driver had about six hours of sleep before a 3:12 am start after an overtime evening shift, and a post-incident sleep study diagnosed moderate obstructive sleep apnoea that routine medical assessment criteria had not triggered.
Case AU-rail-04Report an issue
Story · Jan 2018 · Victoria, Australia
A veteran professional truck driver who had worked through the night, on his third return run between a regional city and a peninsula, rolled his truck on a bend in an industrial suburb after a witness saw it swaying in its lane and almost touching other vehicles. He pleaded guilty to careless driving. The magistrate told the court that fatigue is a hidden killer, but given his long clean record fined him without conviction.
Case AU-transport-14Report an issue
Story · Dec 2017 · Western Australia, Australia
A police officer on a motorcycle training course crashed and died on a sweeping bend on a rural road while riding at high speeds under two instructors. He had made an earlier significant error on the ride, but was allowed to continue at high speed. The coroner found that his errors might have shown he was struggling, "particularly as time went on and fatigue potentially became a factor", and said she would have recommended better fatigue management for trainees. The police force changed the course so that no more than two consecutive training days are scheduled, to manage fatigue.
Case AU-emergency-10Report an issue
Story · Oct 2017 · Western Australia, Australia
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
Story · Aug 2017 · Queensland, Australia
A detainee services officer was woken at 11 am, after working the previous night, and asked to work that night guarding detainees at a hospital used as an alternative place of detention. The officer slept for large parts of the shift while a colleague tried repeatedly to keep her awake, and was later summarily dismissed for serious misconduct. The Fair Work Commission found that sleeping on shift was a valid reason for dismissal, but held the dismissal unfair because of flaws in the employer's investigation, and noted that the officer should have reported her fatigue so she could be replaced. The employer was ordered to pay compensation.
Case AU-corrections-06Report an issue
Story · Aug 2017 · Queensland, Australia
A diesel fitter on a seven-day roster at a coal mine in central Queensland was sent home unwell, was advised by the site paramedic to drive cautiously and rest if fatigued, and later texted that he needed a nap. He was killed in a single-vehicle crash near a mining town at about 10:30 pm, more than eight hours after leaving site. The Queensland Industrial Relations Commission first held that stops taken to manage fatigue should not count against a journey claim, but the Industrial Court overturned that ruling because there was no evidence of how the hours were spent beyond one break, and the death claim failed.
Case AU-mining-06Report an issue
Story · July 2017 · New South Wales, Australia
An interstate refrigerated truck driver left a major inland highway around midnight, about 40 minutes after telling the night operations manager he felt unwell, and was badly injured when the truck hit trees. In-cab footage showed him appearing fatigued and almost falling asleep before the crash, and he agreed he should have stopped. The County Court of Victoria dismissed his negligence claim against the carrier: the company's system left drivers free to stop and rest, and the court could not decide whether fatigue, illness, medication or a driving error caused the crash.
Case AU-transport-36Report an issue
Story · June 2017 · Victoria, Australia
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
Story · June 2017 · Australia
A nurse unit manager found the two nurses on duty both asleep in a darkened residents' lounge, still asleep 15 minutes later, while they were responsible for 10 aged care residents and seven acute care patients. The Fair Work Commission rejected the claim that the nurses were not asleep and said leaving the patients without someone awake and alert 'can be dangerous, or potentially deadly'. The dismissal of the nurse who challenged it was upheld.
Case AU-agedcare-01Report an issue
Story · May 2017 · New South Wales, Australia
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
Story · May 2017 · Queensland, Australia
A truck driver was struck and killed by a falling steel pipe while acting as spotter during forklift unloading at a laydown yard. Company records showed he had worked 26 consecutive days that month, and on the day he reported having had only five hours' sleep. The Queensland coroner accepted that he was fatigued from long days and scheduled driving and that this was a causative factor in the death, alongside exclusion-zone and other safety gaps. The company introduced a fatigue management safe work procedure 11 days after the death.
Case AU-transport-72Report an issue
Story · Mar 2017 · South Australia, Australia
A truck driver who had been driving a fatigue-regulated heavy vehicle for at least 17 of the previous 24 hours collided with a sedan on a regional highway, and two elderly passengers were airlifted to hospital. He told police all he wanted to do was lie down and go to sleep. Police found weeks of false work diary entries and breaches of basic fatigue management hours, and that his employer had GPS data it never cross-checked against drivers' diaries. Both driver and company were convicted and fined; on appeal the Supreme Court said the driver's fine was manifestly inadequate.
Case AU-transport-33Report an issue
Story · Feb 2017 · New South Wales, Australia
The rail union disputed whether a coal rail haulage operator could bring forward train drivers' shift start times by up to two hours, or delay them by up to four, without notice, arguing a driver could be woken during planned sleep and called in early. The Fair Work Commission found the enterprise agreement allowed these changes without advance notice, except for shifts starting between 10pm and 4am. However, it held the company's right was not unfettered: it could not bring a shift forward where that would, or would be likely to, cause fatigue risks, given its safety duty not to roster drivers in a way that exposes them to unreasonable fatigue.
Case AU-rail-15Report an issue
Story · 2017 · New South Wales, Australia
A labour hire farm hand placed at a chicken farm fell asleep driving home after a day of strenuous manual labour, shovelling dirt in a hot, unventilated shed without mechanical help while the farm ran short of staff. His car crashed on a bend and he suffered a crush injury that required amputation of his forearm. The NSW Workers Compensation Commission found a real and substantial connection between the work and the crash, rejected the insurer's argument that a second job caused the fatigue, and ordered weekly compensation and medical expenses.
Case AU-agriculture-03Report an issue
Story · Dec 2016 · Victoria, Australia
About 40 minutes into his shift, a B-double fuel tanker driver for a national logistics company failed to slow or brake for a stop sign and drove into the path of a utility, killing its driver and seriously injuring the passenger. The criminal prosecution was permanently stayed in 2019. At the 2023 inquest the coroner ruled out a heart attack and ordinary tiredness as causes. She found it highly probable that the driver had severe obstructive sleep apnoea at the time, which had not been diagnosed until 2018, and that its symptoms may have contributed. Witnesses had seen him swerving across his lane just before the crash. The driver had held current commercial and dangerous goods fitness-to-drive clearances, and the coroner recommended a public campaign on drivers' duty to report medical conditions.
Case AU-transport-47Report an issue
Story · Dec 2016 · Western Australia, Australia
A freight company failed to keep proper records of work, break and non-work time for nine drivers and allowed one driver to drive excessive hours without adequate rest on an interstate long-haul run. The Magistrates Court fined it $27,000, but on WorkSafe WA's appeal the Supreme Court of Western Australia held the fines manifestly inadequate given the significant fatigue risk of long-haul driving and raised them to $58,000 plus costs, saying penalties must make non-compliance unprofitable.
Case AU-transport-12Report an issue
Story · Nov 2016 · South Australia, Australia
During the grain harvest, a grain terminal operator rostered a worker on his rostered weekend off, saying that using him helped manage the fatigue of other workers under its fatigue management policy. The Commission held that the policy is an important check on who can be given extra shifts, but it does not replace the agreement's selection rules, and on the evidence the policy would not have prevented other qualified operators from working that day.
Case AU-ports-04Report an issue
Story · Oct 2016 · New South Wales, Australia
A council street-cleaning team member also worked full-time evening shifts at a supermarket, about 78 hours a week across both jobs, sometimes with only a four-hour gap between finishing one shift and starting the next. An occupational physician advised that this level of sleep was likely to reduce his alertness and raise his risk of injury and accident, including while working along roadsides, so the council directed him to cap his second-job hours and keep 10-hour breaks. When he refused, the council dismissed him, and the state Industrial Relations Commission held it would have been irresponsible for the council to ignore the medical advice and upheld the dismissal.
Case AU-government-01Report an issue
Story · Aug 2016 · South Australia, Australia
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
Story · May 2016 · New South Wales, Australia
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
Story · Apr 2016 · New South Wales, Australia
An underground coal mine contractor crashed into trees on a 3-hour-15-minute drive home after three consecutive 12-hour shifts, suffering a brain injury and multiple fractures. In 2022 the NSW Supreme Court found the contractor employer negligent for not requiring a personal travel management plan with a rest break and awarded about $1.13 million after a 30% reduction for the worker's own negligence. In 2023 the NSW Court of Appeal set the award aside: fatigue was only one possible cause of the momentary inattention, and the worker had to prove it was the probable cause. The case shows that without evidence of sleep obtained and alertness, fatigue claims can fail even where the roster and commute were demanding.
Case AU-mining-05Report an issue
Story · Mar 2016 · New South Wales, Australia
After finishing a night shift at 7.10 am, a coal mine grader operator slept poorly at home because of a large family lunch, then told his supervisor at the start of the next night shift that he had not slept well. During the shift he went to a fatigue hut without telling anyone, set his alarm for about 35 minutes instead of the recommended 15, slept through it and was away from his machine for about two and a quarter hours. The Commission found he had breached the mine's fatigue management procedure and a direction to report fatigue, and upheld his dismissal.
Case AU-mining-12Report an issue
Story · Mar 2016 · New South Wales, Australia
A meat processing worker was employed on a contract requiring 50 hours a week, starting at 2 am on weekdays and Saturdays, for about three and a half years. The Federal Court held that requiring 12 hours a week above the 38-hour standard was unreasonable under the Fair Work Act, giving weight to the risk to health and safety: fatigue affects alertness and concentration and raises accident risk where workers use knives and cutting machinery. The company was ordered to pay $93,000 in penalties, including $30,000 for the excessive hours breach.
Case AU-food-04Report an issue
Story · Feb 2016 · Victoria, Australia
A B-double driver who had slept five and a half hours, started work at 5:26 am and taken no break longer than seven minutes in nearly six hours of driving drifted 2.3 metres onto the wrong side of a regional highway, causing a head-on crash that left a young woman with multiple fractures and lasting disability. Investigators also found he had falsified his work diary over the previous weeks to hide breaches of work and rest limits, including one 24-hour period with 20.25 hours of work. He was jailed for three years, and the Court of Appeal refused leave to appeal, stressing the grave danger of heavy vehicle drivers who cannot control their trucks 'due to limited sleep, inadequate rest breaks or other avoidable causes'.
Case AU-transport-32Report an issue
Story · Feb 2016 · South Australia, Australia
A fly-in fly-out paste crew member at a remote South Australian mine worked seven 12-hour night shifts followed by seven day shifts with only 24 hours in between. To stay awake during the day so he could sleep that night and start day shift rested, he played cricket at the camp and injured his knee. The tribunal held the injury compensable because the employer's fitness for work policy required staff to manage their time off to prevent fatigue, particularly at shift change, and the Full Bench dismissed the insurer's appeal.
Case AU-mining-04Report an issue
Story · Feb 2016 · Queensland, Australia
Colleagues reported that a custodial officer repeatedly fell asleep at the officers' station while responsible for supervising prisoners and holding the unit door keys, with prisoners banging on windows and laughing at him; on one shift a colleague had to raise his voice or nudge him to open doors. A supervisor said the officer had earlier told her he was falling asleep at work because he was caring for his wife at night after a stroke. The employer found he was asleep on four shifts and dismissed him, and after a 25-day hearing the Commission found the dismissal was not harsh, unjust or unreasonable.
Case AU-corrections-04Report an issue
Story · Jan 2016 · Victoria, Australia
During flash flooding, a council's after-hours duty officer had been handling call-outs from early evening, went to bed, and was woken from a deep sleep around midnight with a request to send warning signs to a flooded ford. The officer fell asleep again before arranging the signs, the road was not closed, and a motorist drove into the ford about an hour later and drowned. The coroner called the lapse seriously regrettable, noted the officer was untrained and covering the role because the council was short of staff, and found that chasing up the request may have got the signs out in time.
Case AU-government-02Report an issue
Story · 2016 · Australian Capital Territory, Australia
About 2,200 junior doctors who worked at the territory's two public hospitals over roughly eight years brought a class action alleging they were not paid for unrostered overtime. The territory government and hospital operators settled for $31.5 million, approved by the Federal Court in 2024. It is one of a series of junior doctor overtime class actions across Australia, with NSW settling for $229.8 million and Victoria for about $175 million.
Case AU-healthcare-04Report an issue
Story · Dec 2015 · Victoria, Australia
A young dairy farm worker who had started milking at 5.30 am the previous day then drove to the city for late-night shopping was driving home before dawn to milk the cows again when he fell asleep. His car crossed the highway and rolled, killing his passenger. A sleep expert found at most three hours 40 minutes' sleep in the previous 24 hours. The court found he knew he was too tired and had thought about pulling over but kept driving, and jailed him.
Case AU-agriculture-04Report an issue
Story · Nov 2015 · New South Wales, Australia
An apprentice printer, placed by a group training company, worked a normal 38-hour week but with starts brought forward to 6:30 am and a 55 km commute each way. Six weeks into the job his car veered into oncoming traffic on the drive home and collided with a tanker, killing him; a co-worker said he had told him he was tired. Sleep evidence put his sleep at only 5.5 to 6.5 hours a night instead of the recommended 7 to 9, and the NSW Workers Compensation Commission found a real and substantial connection between the employment and the crash, even though other factors also contributed to his fatigue.
Case AU-manufacturing-02Report an issue
Story · Nov 2015 · Western Australia, Australia
A rideshare driver also held a full-time security job with 10 to 12 hour shifts, and sometimes drove for the platform afterwards, making days of 14 to 16 hours. Passengers complained that he was 'falling asleep or drunk', looked 'very tired' and crossed centre lines on the freeway. The platform warned him that driving long hours was dangerous. Two weeks later a passenger reported that he 'almost fell asleep at the wheel twice', and the platform suspended and then deactivated his account. The court found the termination lawful because fatigued, unsafe driving was a material breach of the driver agreement, and it dismissed his claim for damages.
Case AU-transport-50Report an issue
Story · Nov 2015 · Victoria, Australia
A B-double driver hauling woodchips to a port on a rotating roster of 12-hour day and night shifts asked to swap shifts with a colleague, saying it would help him manage his fatigue, and later raised fatigue management concerns. After he resigned he sued the haulage company alleging adverse action and award breaches. The court dismissed every claim, finding among other things that the heavy vehicle chain-of-responsibility fatigue provisions he relied on did not give him, as an employee driver, a workplace right, and that taking required rest breaks was simply compliance with his employment obligations.
Case AU-transport-80Report an issue
Story · Oct 2015 · Queensland, Australia
A young driver who delivered pre-prepared meals for his father's company was on an unscheduled delivery run when he fell asleep at the wheel around midday. His car left the bitumen, he over-corrected into the oncoming lane and a three-vehicle collision followed, with some injuries. He told police he had not had enough sleep the night before; the District Court said that for any professional driver, a decision to drive when fatigued is a serious error of judgment.
Case AU-transport-71Report an issue
Story · Aug 2015 · New South Wales, Australia
A club security guard finished an 8pm to 3.30am shift and set off on a 40-minute drive home. Within two kilometres of home, about 4am, he fell asleep, crossed onto the wrong side of the road and hit a car head-on, injuring the other driver's vertebrae. He had been awake about 21 hours and also worked day shifts in a second cash-in-transit job. He was acquitted of dangerous driving but convicted of negligent driving causing grievous bodily harm, and the Court of Criminal Appeal upheld that conviction: driving so tired that sleep could suddenly occur is negligent, whether or not the driver felt a warning.
Case AU-security-05Report an issue
Story · June 2015 · Queensland, Australia
A teenager collapsed in cardiac arrest at a rodeo in a remote far north Queensland community, and a defibrillator and adrenaline did not reach her for 45 to 50 minutes. The two nurses at the local clinic had worked a day shift and then driven two overnight patient transfers totalling about 600 km, returning at 6.30 am, and were too tired to attend the event even though they were nominally on fatigue leave. The coroner found the emergency response inadequate, that the nurses were entitled to uninterrupted fatigue leave and should have been covered by other qualified staff, and that there was no adequate contingency plan for nurses on fatigue leave.
Case AU-healthcare-02Report an issue
Story · May 2015 · Victoria, Australia
A professional tip-truck driver hauling clay from a construction site to landfill was on his way to collect a third load when, over 2.4 km, his 16-tonne truck and trailer crossed onto the wrong side of the road, weaved between lanes, failed to give way and ran a red light. He then hit a car that had been stopped for a full minute without braking, pushing it into two other vehicles and leaving a passenger with partial paraplegia. Phone records showed he had been severely sleep-deprived for a week, with methamphetamine 'rebound' fatigue also contributing, and the Court of Appeal said a driver who knows he cannot control a vehicle properly must not begin or continue driving.
Case AU-transport-46Report an issue
Story · Apr 2015 · Australia
An employee of a global telecommunications and IT company who monitored critical internet gateways for the Australian Government on a variable roster of 12-hour shifts received written warnings for falling asleep at the desk, which the employer said created the potential for major security breaches. After being seen asleep twice in one shift, the employee was dismissed. The employee argued the dismissal followed safety complaints about fatigue from long shifts without breaks, but the Fair Work Commission refused to extend time for the claim and found its merits were not particularly compelling.
Case AU-tech-01Report an issue
Story · Mar 2015 · New South Wales, Australia
At 5:13 am a metropolitan train driver, who had been awake for more than 21 hours and was on a tenth consecutive shift after being called in for a stand-by duty, drove an empty passenger train 761 metres in the wrong direction on a suburban line. A network control officer saw the movement and stopped both the passenger train and a freight train approaching on the same line about 4 km away. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau found the driver was likely fatigue-impaired after more than three hours of high-workload fault-finding in the early-morning circadian low, and that the operator's fatigue processes did not identify the impairment.
Case AU-rail-07Report an issue
Story · Feb 2015 · South Australia, Australia
A general hand at a vineyard crashed into a tree shortly before 3 am while driving home from a night shift in the first week of grape harvest, suffering serious head injuries. His week had moved from day work to night and extended shifts, including one shift of about 19.5 hours, and the crash happened during the early-morning circadian low. The state employment tribunal rejected his journey claim, finding fatigue not proven, and its Full Bench dismissed his appeal. In 2020 the Full Court of the Supreme Court of South Australia set both decisions aside, finding he fell asleep for work-related reasons and that it is enough if the employment increased the risk of an accident of that kind.
Case AU-agriculture-02Report an issue
Story · Jan 2015 · South Australia, Australia
An electricity distributor proposed moving about 26 workers who maintain a capital city's central business district network onto night shifts, and the electrical union took the dispute to the Fair Work Commission. Expert evidence said the roster should not start until the company's draft fatigue management directive was finalised and a worker education and training program was in place. The commission held that implementation should be delayed for further consultation and appropriate health and safety mechanisms, and a Full Bench dismissed the union's appeal in 2015.
Case AU-utilities-01Report an issue
Story · Jan 2015 · Queensland, Australia
A tow truck driver who had worked a full day, slept five hours and started driving at 1 am noticed his eyes getting tired, wound the window down and kept going. At about 6.30 am he fell asleep on a major highway, woke to find the truck veering, struck a bridge guardrail and the truck left the bridge and landed on its roof. The court agreed the offence was serious because he was a professional driver who ignored warning signs of tiredness, though it reduced the licence disqualification on appeal.
Case AU-transport-45Report an issue
Story · Dec 2014 · New South Wales, Australia
A transport union argued that rest breaks which contract truck drivers must take under fatigue laws should count as paid contract time. A Full Bench of the NSW Industrial Relations Commission held that a mandatory fatigue break is an interruption to work, like a meal break, and so is unpaid under the state general carriers contract determination. The appeal against a national logistics company was dismissed.
Case AU-transport-79Report an issue
Story · Dec 2014 · South Australia, Australia
A security officer working alone on a 12-hour night shift (6 pm to 6 am) at a power station was found asleep by a client supervisor at 4.56 am. He had not been able to sleep beforehand because of a family emergency, yet decided he was fit to work, only 10 days after completing the company's online 'fit for work' fatigue training. The Fair Work Commission found the decision to work was a 'seriously flawed assessment' of his own fitness and a valid reason for dismissal, but ordered reinstatement because the employer left him working normally for six weeks before acting.
Case AU-security-04Report an issue
Story · Dec 2014 · New South Wales, Australia
Junior doctors across a state public hospital system brought a class action alleging they were not paid for unrostered overtime, missed meal breaks and incorrectly calculated rostered overtime between 2014 and 2024. The state health ministry settled for $229.8 million, approved by the Supreme Court of NSW in 2024, covering more than 20,000 doctors. The plaintiffs' lawyers said concerns about the dangerous working hours and burnout of junior doctors had been ignored for years, and the health department began encouraging accurate recording of hours worked.
Case AU-healthcare-03Report an issue
Story · Apr 2014 · New South Wales, Australia
A long-haul driver for a freight business rolled a prime mover towing two laden trailers of hazardous goods on a major highway in the early hours, killing himself and his passenger. In the week before, he had told family he was exhausted from his driving work, and during what should have been his 7-hour continuous rest break his employer phoned him several times. The coroner found methylamphetamine the most likely cause and could not positively find that fatigue caused the crash, but noted that the operator, the people who scheduled the trips and those who loaded the truck were all convicted and fined for fatigue-related chain-of-responsibility offences.
Case AU-transport-60Report an issue
Story · Apr 2014 · Queensland, Australia
A truck hauling a 60-tonne load struck and killed a cyclist on a regional road on a clear afternoon, even though the cyclist had been visible for about 13 seconds. The driver was found to have undiagnosed sleep apnoea, and the judge told him he was asleep at the wheel or too fatigued to notice the rider. A jury convicted him of dangerous operation of a vehicle causing death and he was jailed.
Case AU-transport-11Report an issue
Story · Feb 2014 · Queensland, Australia
A custodial officer acting as team leader of the prison's emergency response team was found asleep in the officers' mess at about 3.15 am on a 12-hour night shift, at a time the centre held 116% of its built capacity. He told the Commission dimming the lights and 'resting eyes' late in the night shift was common practice, and that he had begun doing so after experiencing micro-sleeps with his eyelids closing while driving home. The Commission found that in emergencies 'seconds count' and, with his later dishonesty in the investigation, upheld the dismissal.
Case AU-corrections-03Report an issue
Story · Dec 2013 · New South Wales, Australia
A freight train stopped on a regional main line at night so the co-driver could inspect a hot axle alert, and the network controller assured the crew the adjacent line was blocked. It was not, and passenger trains passed on that line at about 90 km/h while the co-driver was out on the track. The Office of Transport Safety Investigations found the controller had been awake about 14 hours, was nine hours into a 10-hour shift with no scheduled break, and that performance was likely degraded by fatigue.
Case AU-rail-06Report an issue
Story · Dec 2013 · New South Wales, Australia
A client services officer with a superannuation and financial services firm finished a full working day at the end of a busy year, then hurried from her hotel to catch a lift to the staff Christmas party and tripped on a raised paver, injuring her ankle. The Arbitrator accepted she was tired from work and hurrying, and that fatigue reduces awareness and reaction times. On appeal the President upheld the finding that tiredness and hurrying, in combination, connected the employment to the fall, so the journey claim succeeded.
Case AU-financial-01Report an issue
Story · Nov 2013 · Victoria, Australia
A worker who had worked five shifts at each of two jobs that week (dishwashing at a bar and early-morning storeman work), including more than 13 hours the day before, drove home from work in the early afternoon on at most five and a half hours' sleep. Other motorists saw his utility weave across the centre line and described him as 'zoned out' before it crossed double white lines into an oncoming family car, killing a mother and her five-year-old daughter and leaving her son paraplegic. The Court of Appeal said he had driven when 'manifestly' fatigued and held the community sentence manifestly inadequate, but declined to increase it because of delay and his cognitive impairments.
Case AU-retail-04Report an issue
Story · Sept 2013 · Western Australia, Australia
A senior equipment operator at a bauxite mine who drives dozers, graders and dump trucks finished a 12-hour night shift at 7 am, was driven about 200 km to play in a football final, and then called in sick shortly before his next 7 pm night shift. The Fair Work Commission found he could have had at most four hours' sleep, half of it in a car, and that planning to play football between two night shifts breached the company's fatigue management policy and was a valid reason for dismissal because returning to work unrested risked his own and others' safety. Given more than six years' clean service, the Commission found dismissal would nonetheless be harsh and unfair.
Case AU-mining-11Report an issue
Story · May 2013 · New South Wales, Australia
A cotton ginner working 12-hour night shifts at a cotton gin was killed when her car turned across a highway into the path of an oncoming B-double as she drove home. She was new to night work, had worked 60 hours in the previous five nights, and had been sent home early from her sixth shift after a machinery breakdown. The Workers Compensation Commission found she most probably fell asleep at the wheel from work-related fatigue, gave more weight to the hours worked than to co-workers' impressions that she did not look tired, and confirmed a lump sum death benefit of $498,950.
Case AU-agriculture-01Report an issue
Story · Oct 2012 · Western Australia, Australia
A locomotive driver at a regional freight rail depot was told at short notice that his shift was being put back to start at 6.00 pm and could run to 6.00 am. He said he could not get enough rest while caring for his baby and would be fatigued, and took carer's leave. His manager then cancelled his scheduled supervisor training. The Federal Circuit Court found the cancellation was adverse action taken partly because he had exercised workplace rights relating to fatigue and carer's leave.
Case AU-rail-18Report an issue
Story · Oct 2012 · New South Wales, Australia
In 2012 the state ambulance service introduced rural rosters requiring paramedics to work seven consecutive days with 16-hour on-call periods outside their shifts, leaving only two recovery days. The union took the dispute to the NSW Industrial Relations Commission, arguing the rosters were harming paramedics' physical and mental health and the quality of patient care. In 2013 the commission's proceedings ended with the rural rosters removed, with future rosters to be set station by station to maximise coverage and lessen paramedic fatigue.
Case AU-emergency-03Report an issue
Story · Sept 2012 · New South Wales, Australia
At about 9:10 pm a stevedore team leader loading aluminium ingots in the hold of a general cargo ship at a regional port was crushed and killed when stacks of ingot packs toppled. He and his hold team were more than 14 hours into a 15-hour 'double-header' shift, his fourth such shift in seven days and about 75 rostered hours that week. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau did not find that fatigue caused the accident, but it found the stevedoring company had never identified stevedore fatigue as a risk and had no system to manage it, leaving its operations exposed to unassessed fatigue risk.
Case AU-ports-03Report an issue
Story · Sept 2012 · Queensland, Australia
A sugar mill worker who had just finished a 12-hour day shift, and was rostered for another 12-hour shift at 6 am the next day, crashed on the drive home at dusk and was injured when her car overturned in a collision with another vehicle. The Queensland Industrial Relations Commission found she was driving at 100 km/h, probably too fast given her inexperience, the time of day and the potential for her alertness to be 'jaded' after a 12-hour shift, and that this dangerous driving was the major cause of the crash. The self-insured employer's appeal succeeded and the compensation claim was excluded.
Case AU-food-03Report an issue
Story · Aug 2012 · New South Wales, Australia
An electricity distributor began implementing a new extended working hours policy and new fatigue management guidelines for field operating staff without consulting the unions. The New South Wales Industrial Relations Commission found the distributor had given its undertaking to keep the status quo 'no more than lip service' and described its conduct as 'most disrespectful'. Because the policy was aimed at controlling health and safety risks from extended hours, the Commission said work health and safety law required consultation and recommended the distributor suspend the policy until it had consulted.
Case AU-utilities-03Report an issue
Story · Feb 2012 · Queensland, Australia
A Queensland transport department investigation into a regional transport company's compliance with heavy vehicle fatigue laws led to 45 of its drivers being charged with 148 fatigue management offences, and each pleaded guilty. The company, its directors and two managers were charged with 742 offences. The firm's former operations manager claimed workers' compensation for a psychological injury caused by stress over the fatigue work practices; the regulator said it could no longer defend its rejection of the claim, and the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission refused the company's bid to delay the appeal until the criminal cases ended.
Case AU-transport-78Report an issue
Story · Jan 2012 · Australia
A forklift driver at a car manufacturing plant was dismissed after a series of forklift accidents, including dropped loads in 2011 and 2012. He had sleep apnoea treated with a CPAP machine and said overtime, pain and personal stress had worsened his tiredness and concentration. Fair Work Australia found the employer's medical service and operational supervisors were disconnected, so he had been allowed to drive while his sleep disorder was never medically resolved, and that this was a failure to provide a safe system of work. The dismissal was held harsh and he was reinstated with lost wages.
Case AU-manufacturing-01Report an issue
Story · Aug 2011 · Victoria, Australia
At the end of a very busy 14-hour night shift with no meal break, a flight paramedic was dispatched at dawn to a car-versus-truck crash with a trapped, unconscious patient, but the helicopter was not airborne for 35 minutes, against a 10-minute expected response. The Fair Work Commission accepted the paramedic was fatigued but found he had deliberately delayed so the incoming shift would take the job, and held the dismissal was not unfair. On appeal, a Full Bench left the misconduct finding intact but sent the matter back because the paramedic had not been given a chance to respond on penalty.
Case AU-emergency-07Report an issue
Story · Aug 2011 · Australian Capital Territory, Australia
A university night watchman worked a three-week rotating roster that included seven consecutive midnight-to-8am shifts. His treating doctors linked his grand mal seizures in 2007 and 2010 to sleep deprivation, and in 2010 his GP advised that he should not work the midnight shift. He died at home in 2011 from sudden unexpected death in epilepsy. The Administrative Appeals Tribunal found that the night shifts had contributed to his seizures and set aside the rejection of the claim, holding the university liable to pay death compensation to his widow.
Case AU-security-01Report an issue
Story · Apr 2011 · New South Wales, Australia
Three long-serving maintenance tradesmen at a pet food factory were filling in on a busy 12-hour night shift, two of them on their second or third night in a row. Around 2 am managers found one lying across three chairs with his eyes closed and another lying on a bag of insulation batts he had dragged into the workshop; the third was found to have lain down and then been dishonest about it. A union witness described 12-hour night shifts as exhausting, with workers commonly 'nodding off' in the early hours. Fair Work Australia accepted two of the men were fatigued but held that deliberately lying down, unlike accidentally falling asleep at a workstation, was a valid reason for dismissal and upheld all three sackings.
Case AU-food-05Report an issue
Story · Apr 2011 · New South Wales, Australia
A police officer working the last of four consecutive 12-hour night shifts failed to record or escalate written allegations of serious crimes handed to him at the front desk. The officer said he had slept only 2 to 4 hours a day between shifts and that sleep deprivation affected his judgment. The Industrial Relations Commission accepted he was sleep deprived and that fatigue moderately mitigated his conduct during the shift, but held that an officer who is not fit for work has a responsibility not to report for duty, and upheld his removal from the state police force.
Case AU-emergency-08Report an issue
Story · Apr 2011 · Tasmania, Australia
A telecommunications team leader left home at 5 am in a company car to attend a team leaders' meeting in another city, having slept poorly for several nights because of a flu-like illness and appearing very tired the night before. About an hour into the trip her car failed to follow a bend and crossed into the path of a fully laden log truck, and she died at the scene. The coroner found the most likely explanation was that she had succumbed to fatigue and fallen asleep shortly before the collision, and recommended continued public education on driver fatigue.
Case AU-telecommunication-01Report an issue
Story · Feb 2011 · Western Australia, Australia
A professional truck driver started work at about 2 am and, almost 13 hours later, was driving a 40-tonne refrigerated semi-trailer when he drifted onto the shoulder and struck two parked cars, killing a motorist changing a flat tyre and a passer-by who had stopped to help. For about 40 km beforehand other drivers saw the truck weaving between lanes and off the road edge, and one passenger said he looked half asleep. He had taken the required 30-minute break every five hours, but the court found he was suffering from fatigue, knew he was tending to doze and should have stopped to rest.
Case AU-transport-44Report an issue
Story · 2011 · Western Australia, Australia
A casual line-haul truck driver drove multi-trailer loads between Perth and a remote mine site and was paid a flat trip rate. Under the national long-distance road transport award, a trip rate is only allowed where the employer has an accredited fatigue management plan setting the driving hours for the journey. The Industrial Magistrates Court of WA found the company had not proved it had such a plan for that route, so the driver had to be paid by hours driven, and upheld the union's claim for $23,310.93.
Case AU-transport-77Report an issue
Story · Dec 2010 · New South Wales, Australia
A waste collection driver working under a council collection contract told his supervisor that continuing to drive would take him over the hours allowed by fatigue management regulations. He was then told not to come to work. Fair Work Australia found the instruction was punishment in retaliation for raising the fatigue issue, called the employer's conduct unconscionable, and upheld the unfair dismissal claim.
Case AU-waste-01Report an issue
Story · Nov 2010 · Victoria, Australia
A young vinyl-flooring subcontractor worked about 16 hours across two job sites, slept about three hours, and was called back to work the next day. Driving home from a job site in the afternoon he stopped for energy drinks and texted that he was falling asleep at the wheel because of 'not enough sleep', then kept driving. Minutes later his car veered onto the wrong side of the road and struck a council drainage worker standing beside his marked work truck, who died two days later. He pleaded guilty to culpable driving on the basis that he fell asleep knowing he was fatigued.
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Story · Oct 2010 · South Australia, Australia
A semi-trailer driver with about a year's heavy licence and little experience of a steep freeway descent into the city lost control of his speed and struck and killed a man at a bus stop at the bottom of the freeway. He had driven overnight from Victoria under pressure to meet a 9.30am delivery deadline, had less than the required seven hours' continuous rest in the previous 24 hours, and his work diary was incomplete and inaccurate. The coroner found a powerful suggestion that fatigue of his own making contributed, criticised the operator's dysfunctional practices and recommended tougher penalties and chain-of-responsibility cost recovery.
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Story · Sept 2010 · Western Australia, Australia
During a day of mass driver absences in an industrial dispute, a railcar driver rang his depot after midnight to say he had not slept for several nights and did not feel fit to drive the next morning. The state public transport authority that employed him found he had abused its fatigue management policy and sick leave and docked his pay. The Commission accepted his account, noted the policy itself deems drivers with under five hours' recovery sleep in 24 hours unfit for safety-critical work, and quashed the disciplinary findings.
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Story · Sept 2010 · New South Wales, Australia
A food delivery driver for a regional restaurant, who had worked six nights that week and spent the day trail-bike riding before his evening shift, crashed into other vehicles while out on deliveries, killing one person and seriously injuring another. He told paramedics he thought he had fallen asleep and that he should not have gone to work because he felt tired. The court accepted the crash was caused by an epileptic seizure, but found he knew that his sleep deprivation, combined with his epilepsy and cannabis use, could trigger a seizure and drove anyway, against medical advice; he had earlier crashed driving home from a delivery shift in 2007.
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Story · Apr 2010 · Queensland, Australia
A bulk carrier ran aground on a shoal off the central Queensland coast in 2010, shortly after loading coal at a Queensland port. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau found the chief mate's monitoring of the ship's position was ineffective and his actions were affected by fatigue, and that no fatigue management system ensured watchkeepers were fit to stand watch after supervising cargo loading.
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Story · Mar 2010 · New South Wales, Australia
After two of its trucks were involved in major crashes on two metropolitan motorways in 2010, a quarry-materials haulage company was audited by the roads authority. The audit found the company had no fatigue management system at all and left breaks to drivers, who were scheduled to work beyond standard hours and drove while impaired by fatigue. The state Supreme Court found the company, a director and a scheduler 'completely failed to have regard to public safety' and convicted them on 40 fatigue and work-hours charges.
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Story · Mar 2010 · California, United States (overseas layover for an Australian crew)
A long-serving international flight attendant with an airline, on an overseas layover, took a pair of boots from a crew hotel lobby, believing they were abandoned. He had struggled to sleep for months, slept only a few hours after his inbound long-haul flight and said sleep deprivation clouded his judgement. The tribunal reviewed the medical and research evidence and accepted that poor sleep and fatigue may have contributed, but found the evidence did not show it was the main cause, and upheld the dismissal, noting he could be expected to monitor his sleep in future.
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Story · Aug 2009 · Queensland, Australia
A concrete driller who had just finished a 16-hour shift, his tenth consecutive working day, turned his utility across the path of an oncoming motorcycle on a straight, well-lit road in a regional city, killing the rider. The sentencing judge inferred he must have been so tired that he should not have been driving, and the Queensland Court of Appeal upheld the finding of a prolonged failure to keep a proper lookout rather than momentary inattention. He received three years' imprisonment suspended after nine months and a four-year licence disqualification.
Case AU-construction-01Report an issue
Story · Feb 2009 · New South Wales, Australia
A registered nurse in charge of a 14-bed medical assessment unit on night shift, with only one enrolled nurse alongside her, regularly slept in empty patient beds during extended breaks and let junior staff do the same. On one night she had to be shaken several times to wake while the enrolled nurse gave intravenous medication she was not authorised to give. The tribunal found that sleeping while responsible for the ward, together with medication and honesty failures, amounted to professional misconduct and cancelled her registration.
Case AU-healthcare-08Report an issue
Story · Nov 2008 · New South Wales, Australia
A coal mining company moved its mine maintenance crews from a rotating 40-hour day and afternoon roster to a 44-hour roster with three 12-hour day shifts a week, and stood down an electrical fitter who refused to work the full shifts. The court accepted that 12-hour shifts can cause fatigue-related health and safety problems, but found the risk much lower on a fixed day-shift roster with no night or weekend work and 12-16 hours off between shifts, so the extra hours were reasonable. The one-day stand-down was nonetheless declared a breach of workplace relations law.
Case AU-mining-16Report an issue
Story · Nov 2008 · New South Wales, Australia
A long-haul refrigerated truck driver was killed when his B-double rolled forward during a roadside repair at a heavy vehicle inspection site, after he had been stopped for exceeding his driving hours. The court found the company had failed to follow its own fatigue management policy - it took the driver's word on rest breaks and did not use its GPS records - but held the prosecution had not proved the driver was fatigued at the time of the repair. The company and its director were convicted for an unsafe roadside repair system, while the fatigue and drug particulars were dismissed.
Case AU-transport-52Report an issue
Story · Nov 2008 · Queensland, Australia
A long-distance passenger tilt train struck a B-double truck that entered a highway level crossing despite flashing warning lights, killing both train drivers. The rail safety investigation adopted by the coroner could not determine why the truck driver did not stop: low expectancy of a train and possible fatigue or a microsleep both remained possible, because the driver's work and sleep records were incomplete. The coroner highlighted the gap between rail and road transport in vehicle monitoring and driver fatigue management.
Case AU-rail-16Report an issue
Story · Oct 2008 · Queensland, Australia
A dump truck operator at a central Queensland coal mine crashed on the long drive home after the last of four consecutive 12-hour night shifts and suffered a serious brain injury. In 2016 the Supreme Court of Queensland found fatigue was a significant contributing cause of the crash, on at least 17 to 19 hours awake. The mine operator, the host employer and the labour hire agency were all held liable.
Case AU-mining-01Report an issue
Story · July 2008 · South Australia, Australia
A heavy truck driver stopped at a routine roadside check was found to have dexamphetamine tablets, which he admitted were carried to stop him falling asleep, and had failed to keep his logbook and give his driving record to his employer. He was given a suspended prison sentence and fines. On appeal the Supreme Court of South Australia replaced a licence disqualification with bond conditions, including supervision, drug and alcohol courses and a ban on driving other than for work, stressing that stimulants used to keep drivers alert create serious road safety risks.
Case AU-transport-66Report an issue
Story · Apr 2008 · Victoria, Australia
A B-double driver on a major interstate highway was struggling to stay awake and had already drifted out of his lane before he fell asleep and ran into the back of a rural fire brigade truck around midday. The fire truck driver suffered a brain injury and lasting disability. There was no alcohol, drugs, speed or road factor - the court held that the offence lay in choosing to keep driving while knowing he was drowsy. He was jailed, and the sentence was later reduced on appeal to time served.
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Story · 2008 · Queensland, Australia
Paramedics at a regional ambulance station refused to work on call on top of a 24/7 roster of 12-hour shifts, citing fatigue, broken sleep at the station and safety. The Queensland Industrial Relations Commission accepted that on-call work after a shift is fatiguing because it disrupts sleep, but found it reasonable for the station to keep on-call duty to meet emergency demand. It recommended that the state ambulance service improve call-out management and discuss where on-call sits in the roster.
Case AU-emergency-11Report an issue
Story · Dec 2007 · Queensland, Australia
Two rail systems maintenance workers were killed when a reversing track machine ran over them during track resurfacing work on a Queensland coal rail network. The state transport investigation found rostering and fatigue management practices contributed to a progressive accumulation of fatigue at the worksite, that no organisation-wide fatigue management policy existed, and that key crew members had not been given the required ten-hour break before their shift the previous day. The coroner agreed that fatigue in two crew members with pivotal roles could not be ruled out as a contributor. The rail operator was successfully prosecuted by the state work health and safety regulator.
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Story · July 2007 · South Australia, Australia
A marine painter preparing submarines for painting was on pain medication after a back injury and complained of insomnia, exhaustion and drowsiness, and on one occasion felt tired and sleepy while driving home from work. When his weekly payments were cut off for not attending modified duties, the Workers Compensation Tribunal set the decision aside because the return-to-work plan made no provision for his safe transport to and from work. The Full Bench dismissed the employer's appeal.
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Story · July 2007 · New South Wales, Australia
A casual school teacher drifted off the road on a major highway while driving home after a day's teaching, then collided with two other cars and was knocked unconscious. The employer argued that tiredness or a microsleep was a 'condition of the worker' that excused it from paying a journey claim. The Workers Compensation Commission found on the probabilities that the teacher briefly fell asleep at the wheel, but held that tiredness is not a medical-type condition and that driving on a 100 km/h highway contributed to the injury, so the claim stood and the employer paid the appeal costs.
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Story · July 2007 · New South Wales, Australia
At about 5:48 am two rail maintenance workers repairing faulty points near a regional town, working under a lookout-only protection arrangement, did not see an approaching loaded coal train and were struck and killed. The Office of Transport Safety Investigations found both had worked seven shifts in the previous seven days (about 63 and 59.5 hours), with fatigue scores in the high range, and were working in the early-morning circadian low. It found it probable both were suffering a degree of fatigue that may have affected their appreciation of the risks.
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Story · May 2007 · Queensland, Australia
A courier driver carrying heavy mining equipment set off at about 5.20pm, after a full day's work, intending to drive almost 1,000 kilometres to deliver it, and died about 10pm when her vehicle left a regional highway and hit a tree. The Queensland coroner found she most likely went to sleep while driving and that fatigue was a significant factor. The coroner recommended that workplace health and safety authorities encourage employers not to have unrealistic expectations of courier drivers travelling long distances after a full day's work.
Case AU-transport-70Report an issue
Story · Feb 2007 · Queensland, Australia
A front-end loader operator died after colliding with another vehicle about 30 minutes into his drive home after a 12-hour night shift, having also worked an extra shift on a rostered rest day. The Queensland coroner heard the case jointly with a 2005 fatal crash involving a dump truck operator driving more than two hours home after a 13-hour day shift. The coroner found fatigue contributed in both crashes and described police evidence of many fatigued mine workers driving long distances at the end of shift.
Case AU-mining-02Report an issue
Story · Nov 2006 · Victoria, Australia
A state police force sought to end 12-hour shift rosters at three regional stations, citing fatigue. Expert witnesses including a leading fatigue scientist gave evidence, and officers described near misses driving home, falling asleep at the station and stopping for power naps on night shift. The Commission found a bona fide health and safety issue, allowed the 12-hour rosters to be terminated, and called the case a wake-up call about the dangers of fatigue and poor rostering, while noting the standard 8-hour roster had its own fatigue problems.
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Story · Aug 2006 · Western Australia, Australia
An offshore tug and supply ship returning from a drilling rig to a regional port ran onto shoals off an island at almost 10 knots at 4:45 am, after the second mate set the autopilot on a wrong course and did not plot recorded GPS positions or act on visual cues. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau found the second mate had been working for almost 17 hours straight, having worked about 18-hour days after joining the ship while unwell, and that both he and the master were probably affected by fatigue. Shipboard procedures recorded work hours but did not ensure watchkeeper fatigue was managed.
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Story · Mar 2006 · Tasmania, Australia
A contracted B-double driver hauling equipment for a touring stunt show worked through the night packing up after a performance until about 4.00 am, then set off in convoy. On a downhill curve with an advisory speed of 85 km/h, the prime mover was travelling at about 100-115 km/h, drifted into the right lane and rolled onto the railing, and the driver was killed. The coroner found that the driver had probably not slept for 20 to almost 24 hours, and that this fatigue and his unfamiliarity with the road probably led to him approaching the curve too fast.
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Story · Dec 2005 · Queensland, Australia
A long-distance truck driver was killed when his road train left a highway in regional Queensland and rolled, with no sign of braking. The coroner found he fell asleep at the wheel after driving 1,580 km - roughly 20 hours of driving in a 30 and a half hour period - and more than 5,000 km in six days that were not recorded in his logbook. Drivers told the inquest the employer encouraged excessive hours and falsified logbooks, but the coroner could not make findings on this because those claims were never properly investigated. The coroner urged greater enforcement of fatigue management laws, a culture of compliance in trucking companies, and better rest stops for truck drivers.
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Story · Nov 2005 · New South Wales, Australia
A truck driver worked from midnight to 8 pm with only a two-and-a-half-hour break for sleep, then told his employer he was too tired to do a country run that night and was falling asleep at dinner. He was dismissed in the same phone call. The NSW Industrial Relations Commission found the instruction unreasonable, that the hours would have left him fatigued, and that refusing to drive was appropriate and sensible. It ordered the maximum compensation available.
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Story · Oct 2005 · Queensland, Australia
A government vessel became lost in fog and sank in remote northern waters; none of the five people on board, including a young child, survived. The police sergeant acting as local search and rescue coordinator had been recalled to duty at about 4pm after working a full shift and stayed on duty until after 10pm the next day. The State Coroner found he failed to take decisive action or pass on that the boat was sinking, called his hours inappropriate and found his fatigue may well have contributed to his errors of judgement, and referred his conduct for consideration of disciplinary action.
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Story · Sept 2005 · New South Wales, Australia
A process controller on rotating 12-hour shifts in a steelmaking furnace control room kept blowing oxygen into a furnace past the stop point in 2004, admitting he was 'extremely fatigued' and had a microsleep, and only woke when a colleague walked in. After a further lapse in 2005, when an oxygen lance re-blow overheated a heat of steel and cost the business more than $100,000, he was dismissed. The state Industrial Relations Commission treated the microsleep at a critical point in the process as part of a pattern of loss of concentration and found the dismissal was not harsh, unjust or unreasonable; the furnace manager had already voiced concern that the worker was not coping with rotating 12-hour shifts.
Case AU-manufacturing-08Report an issue
Story · July 2005 · Queensland, Australia
A casual hydroblasting worker employed by a maintenance contractor fell through an open hatch on top of a settler tank at an alumina refinery during a night shift and died. He had worked 25 or 26 consecutive 12-hour shifts (10 days then 16 nights), allowed by a supervisor who had no fatigue training and either ignored or did not know the company's safe hours of work policy. The coroner found fatigue was on the balance of probabilities a contributing factor and recommended expert review of rosters, an alert for excessive consecutive shifts and industry-wide monitoring of contractors' hours across sites.
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Story · Apr 2005 · New South Wales, Australia
A B-double driver carrying nearly 60 tonnes overnight from regional Victoria to the city ran a red light at a suburban intersection mid-morning and struck a turning car, killing its driver. The sentencing judge found he had been on the road at least 14 hours against a 12-hour limit and concluded he either fell asleep or was so tired he failed to register the lights. On appeal the sentence was reduced, the court treating the offence as serious whether it was caused by fatigue after the long journey or by distraction.
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Story · Jan 2005 · South Australia, Australia
A young ventilated patient in a public hospital intensive care unit dislodged his breathing tube during an episode of agitation shortly after midnight. Despite bile in the tube and falling oxygen levels, clinicians kept believing the tube was correctly placed for about an hour; a paralysing drug was given and the misplaced tube was only identified later, and the patient died of hypoxic brain injury days afterwards. One of the intensive care doctors told the inquest the event happened during his fourth 15-hour night shift in 8 days, and the coroner observed that the management of the crisis may have been contributed to by fatigue.
Case AU-healthcare-15Report an issue
Story · Aug 2004 · South Australia, Australia
A registered nurse who suffered a traumatic brain injury in a fall at work at a children's hospital in 2004 later developed hypersomnia (excessive daytime sleepiness). In 2021 the state employment tribunal assessed 40% whole person impairment for the sleep disorder. Later that year its Full Bench allowed the employer's appeal, holding that the earlier 2009 lump sum for brain injury had already taken impaired sleep into account, so no further lump sum was payable even if the sleepiness had worsened.
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Story · Aug 2004 · New South Wales, Australia
At about 7.20 am, less than two hours into her shift, a city light rail driver fell asleep approaching the end-of-line terminus. The tram ran past the platform and hit the safety buffer stops about 50 metres further on at around 12 km/h, 7 km/h over the posted limit. A passenger suffered bruised knees and repairs were estimated at $100,000 to $150,000. The Commission noted there was no evidence about her sleep the night before, found the operator accountable for safe operation and upheld her dismissal.
Case AU-rail-12Report an issue
Story · Apr 2004 · New South Wales, Australia
An after-hours helpdesk consultant on a 10-hour night shift (8 pm to 6 am, seven on and seven off) was found by her manager at about 3.30 am lying under her desk on a sleeping bag and cushion while a colleague watched the phones. A co-worker told the tribunal that 'a little nap' was common practice on that shift. The NSW Industrial Relations Commission rejected her migraine explanation, found a 'deliberate, premeditated decision to make oneself comfortable in order to sleep' and upheld her dismissal, noting that sleeping on the job is not permitted unless expressly condoned, as for firefighters or ambulance officers.
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Story · Feb 2004 · Queensland, Australia
Between 4.30 and 4.45 am on a night shift at a Queensland coal mine, the driver of a 300-tonne coal haul truck fell asleep and drove up an embankment. He checked the truck by torchlight, kept driving and did not report the incident or deal with his fatigue until an investigation traced the tyre marks two days later. The Commission found there were valid safety reasons for the dismissal and dismissed his unfair dismissal claim.
Case AU-mining-10Report an issue
Story · Aug 2003 · New South Wales, Australia
A rod mill inspector who had worked heavy overtime, averaging about 52 hours a week over five weeks, fell asleep in a crib room during his second shift of a double after about five hours' sleep. The inspection station stopped for at least 20 minutes, costing the mill about $12,000 an hour. After his dismissal he was diagnosed with mild obstructive sleep apnoea, which the Commission said may explain why his performance had declined. It found the dismissal too harsh and ordered him re-employed in another position.
Case AU-manufacturing-07Report an issue
Story · July 2003 · Western Australia, Australia
A trades assistant on a 6 pm to 6 am night shift during an urgent shutdown at a nickel mine was found asleep in a vehicle near the crib room twice in one shift. The Commission accepted that renovations at the workers' hotel had limited their daytime sleep to three or four hours, but found alcohol between shifts also played a part. The employer said a sleeping worker at a mine site could not hear an alarm or evacuate, and the Commission agreed the practice was unsafe and upheld the dismissal.
Case AU-mining-09Report an issue
Story · May 2003 · Western Australia, Australia
Before his first night shift at a bauxite mine, a remote-control bulldozer operator managed only about half an hour of sleep after a medical appointment and in hot weather. During the shift the very large bulldozer made three incursions into the bush, the last about 90 metres while he was asleep with his hand still on the controls, leaving the machine in effect uncontrolled. The Commission found he was fatigued and asleep for over a minute, noted his crew had not yet received the company's fatigue training, and confirmed a 36-hour unpaid suspension.
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Story · Mar 2003 · South Australia, Australia
A state police officer finishing his fifth consecutive night shift was kept back about two and a half hours on overtime, then collided with a car while riding his motorcycle home at about 10 am, breaking his leg. The insurer rejected his claim as a private journey. The Workers Compensation Tribunal found he had fallen asleep and that being asleep caused the crash, and that, because the overtime meant he would otherwise have been home in bed, there was a real and substantial connection between his work and the accident.
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Story · Nov 2002 · New South Wales, Australia
A clinical nurse specialist with a community mental health acute care team was called in early to cover a sick colleague, then worked her own shift, finishing at about 1.30 am after roughly 17 hours without a break or food. After driving home she lost her footing getting out of her car and injured her knee, which she attributed to extreme fatigue and light-headedness. The Workers Compensation Commission accepted that the injury arose out of her employment and that the long, demanding shift was a substantial contributing factor, although the period of compensation was cut back on appeal.
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Story · July 2002 · Australia (national test case)
In a national test case brought by the union movement on awards covering coal mining, ambulance, retail and postal work, a Full Bench of the national industrial tribunal accepted expert evidence that lack of sleep and fatigue increase accidents and that significant fatigue can be compared to alcohol intoxication. It found that long hours of work can harm employee health and safety, while noting fatigue depends on how much sleep workers actually get, not just hours. The tribunal created a new award standard letting employees refuse overtime that would make their hours unreasonable, having regard to any risk to health and safety.
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Story · July 2002 · Victoria, Australia
A permanent night-shift supervisor at a plastics injection moulding plant was found asleep in a darkened granulator room and was dismissed after 25 years' service for sleeping at work, in breach of a written undertaking, and for hiding it. The Commission found he had slept on duty beyond his breaks, but accepted that the 58-hour week he had worked at the company's request, which affected his sleep at home, was a mitigating factor, and that his former supervisor had tolerated sleeping on breaks. The dismissal was held harsh and the company was ordered to pay him $9,390.48.
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Story · July 2002 · Queensland, Australia
During a night transit of an inner reef shipping route off north Queensland, the coastal pilot on a bulk carrier lay down on the bridge settee intending to rest and fell asleep, while the officer of the watch let the ship drift west of the planned route. When the pilot woke about an hour later the ship was close to a reef and grounded minutes later despite emergency manoeuvres. The investigation found the pilot was significantly fatigued, mainly because of his own fatigue strategies before and during the passage, after back-to-back long pilotages with little time ashore, and that he was likely affected by sleep inertia on waking.
Case AU-maritime-04Report an issue
Story · June 2002 · New South Wales, Australia
A private prison operator sought to move correctional officers at a regional prison from 8-hour to 12-hour shifts. The union opposed the change, with witnesses giving evidence of officers falling asleep at posts on 12-hour rosters at other centres and of drowsy driving on long rural commutes after shifts. The NSW Industrial Relations Commission found the benefits to employees outweighed the disadvantages but, mindful of the union's concerns, allowed 12-hour shifts only as a 12-month trial with a joint roster committee, an independent process for officers to stay on 8-hour shifts and staggered breaks.
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Story · Apr 2002 · Western Australia, Australia
A resident medical officer at a metropolitan hospital drove home at about 9 am after a 10-hour night shift, having slept only four and a half to five hours the day before and carrying a significant sleep debt from his run of night shifts. He felt tired on the way, kept driving, fell asleep for a few seconds, drifted onto the verge and seriously injured two pedestrians. He was convicted of dangerous driving causing grievous bodily harm, and the Supreme Court dismissed his appeal: knowing he was fatigued and driving on was itself the dangerous driving.
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Story · Dec 2001 · Western Australia, Australia
A casino croupier rolled her car several times on the drive home after a night shift that ended at 4 am, suffering serious injuries with ongoing disability. The WA District Court found the casino owed a duty to warn night-shift staff about circadian effects and accumulating sleep debt, and to adjust rosters to avoid pre-dawn finishes. The claim still failed because the court was not satisfied she had actually fallen asleep, rather than simply lost attention, and found a warning would probably not have changed what she did. The WA Court of Appeal upheld the dismissal in 2014 and costs went against the worker.
Case AU-retail-01Report an issue
Story · Nov 2001 · South Australia, Australia
A truck driver hauling a loaded trailer to a port had been on the road for much of the 38 hours before the crash, covering more than 1,500 km, and had taken methylamphetamine to combat tiredness. In the early hours his prime mover crossed to the wrong side of the highway and collided with another prime mover, killing its driver. He was convicted of causing death by dangerous driving and jailed, and the Court of Criminal Appeal by majority dismissed his appeals against conviction and sentence.
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Story · Feb 2001 · New South Wales, Australia
A professional semi-trailer driver set off at night on an interstate run on a tight schedule, recorded no rest times in his log book and drove through the night after working all day. Over the last 50 km he repeatedly drifted onto the wrong side of the highway, and another motorist reported him to police about 15 minutes before he fell asleep and veered into an oncoming car, killing a mother and her adult daughter. The court found the principal cause of his fatigue was lack of sleep from working all day and driving through the night with inadequate rest stops, with amphetamine use a contributing factor.
Case AU-transport-49Report an issue
Story · Nov 2000 · South Australia, Australia
A security guard on a 9 pm to 6 am shift guarding a city school fell asleep in his car at about 3.40 am and was woken by an inspector banging on the roof, by which time his car had been graffitied. The state Industrial Relations Commission found he had been asleep for at least 20 and possibly 35 minutes and was 'recklessly indifferent' to the possibility of drifting off. His summary dismissal was upheld, and a Full Commission dismissed his appeal, holding that falling asleep need not be deliberate to justify dismissal in a security role.
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Story · Nov 2000 · Western Australia, Australia
An operator at a Western Australian mineral sands processing plant, working 12-hour rotating day and night shifts, sat down after finishing his kiln readings at about 4.30am on a short-staffed night shift and was woken by his supervisor at about 4.45am. He was summarily dismissed for being found asleep during paid working time. The WA Industrial Relations Commission accepted evidence that catnaps on night shift were common and had been tolerated, noted the company itself acknowledged night-shift tiredness was a problem it managed by policy, and ordered his reinstatement.
Case AU-mining-18Report an issue
Story · July 2000 · Victoria, Australia
A kitchen hand and personal care attendant at a regional nursing home and hostel fell at work after being on duty for about 29 of the previous 34 hours, including an overnight sleepover shift in which she said she got little if any sleep caring for a sick resident. She sued her employer, alleging that requiring her to work those hours breached its duty to provide a safe system of work. A Supreme Court jury found for the employer in 2008, but in 2010 the Victorian Court of Appeal quashed the verdict and ordered a new trial because defence counsel's address, including an improper argument about her sleep-loss evidence, made the trial unfair. The employer was ordered to pay the worker's costs of the first trial and the appeal.
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Story · June 2000 · South Australia, Australia
A long-distance truck driver who had driven between three capital cities, with at most eight and a half hours' rest in the previous 24 hours, drove into the back of a slow-moving, clearly marked road survey truck on a freeway in daylight. One road worker in the survey truck was left a paraplegic and another was seriously injured. The driver was jailed for dangerous driving causing grievous bodily harm, and the injured worker later received $2 million in damages, reduced by 25% because he was not wearing a seatbelt.
Case AU-transport-63Report an issue
Story · Feb 2000 · South Australia, Australia
A night cleaner at a regional hospital whose role included front-line security had been warned in 1997 after nurses found him asleep across waiting-room seats at 4 am and could not raise him when a patient arrived. In 2000 a doctor found him lying on a couch in the medical library with his eyes closed in the middle of the night, and he was dismissed. The Commission did not decide whether he was actually asleep, but found that resting out of reach had compromised hospital security, and the Full Commission upheld the dismissal by majority.
Case AU-healthcare-11Report an issue
Story · Jan 2000 · Queensland, Australia
At about 6:54 am a harbour tug assisting a container ship to berth at a major port was washed in under the ship's stern by its propeller wash. The tug master misjudged his response and the towline pulled the tug's bow into the ship's side, tearing a hole about 3 metres long in the hull before the line parted. Investigators found the tug master was probably experiencing some effects of fatigue at the end of a busy night shift, which may have affected his perception, judgement and response at close quarters.
Case AU-ports-02Report an issue
Story · Dec 1999 · Northern Territory, Australia
A tour bus driver, on her third consecutive day of long hours, rose at 3.15am for a 4.30am start, had no lunch break until 3.30pm, and twice asked to go home because she was tired but was refused because of staff shortages. At about 7.35pm, more than 15 hours into her day, she turned the empty bus right across a highway without seeing an oncoming four-wheel drive, which swerved and rolled, and three of its young occupants died. The Northern Territory coroner found her lack of alertness was caused to some extent by tiredness and fatigue resulting from her working conditions.
Case AU-transport-75Report an issue
Story · Nov 1999 · Queensland, Australia
A delivery driver who had worked a split day shift was asked to cover an overnight newspaper run for a sick colleague. He could not sleep in the break before the run, felt tired on the road and crashed into a tree at about 4.30 am, suffering serious injuries. He sued his employer for requiring excessive hours without adequate rest, but the Queensland Court of Appeal held that a claim for directing a fatigued employee to drive is a motor vehicle claim, not a workers' compensation claim, and because the compulsory third party insurer was not notified in time the claim failed without the fatigue case ever being tried.
Case AU-transport-74Report an issue
Story · Oct 1999 · Victoria, Australia
A secondary teacher transferred to a school about 100 km from his home claimed the state education department indirectly discriminated against him because fatigue and an inability to concentrate on long drives, linked by a sleep physician to idiopathic hypersomnolence, meant he could not manage the daily commute without naps. The tribunal dismissed the complaint, finding the sleep diagnosis had not been shown to be an impairment linked to an inability to concentrate. It also found the transfer requirement was reasonable, given the department's guideline that teachers may travel up to about an hour to school.
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Story · Sept 1999 · New South Wales, Australia
A long-haul driver for a family haulage company died around midnight when his articulated lorry crashed into another truck on a major coastal highway. The company had no real fatigue policy beyond telling drivers to 'abide by the log-book', did not review hours, built rosters without regard to fatigue and pushed delivery deadlines. In the 47 hours before his death the driver had had no more than about three hours' continuous break. The company's director was convicted in what the court called a test case on fatigue management in road transport.
Case AU-transport-27Report an issue
Story · Sept 1999 · Northern Territory, Australia
A casual road train driver died after his prime mover and cement tanker left a remote highway and rolled at about 1.30am, on an interstate run he began at 4pm. In the days before he had driven repeated 15-hour runs, getting home after midnight and starting again the same morning. The Northern Territory coroner found he fell asleep or dozed at the wheel, accepted expert evidence that his schedule was extremely onerous, and found the company did little more than pass the voluntary fatigue code to its drivers.
Case AU-transport-73Report an issue
Story · July 1999 · South Australia, Australia
A council tractor operator mowing a reserve was found by a passing resident slumped in the cab with the engine running, apparently asleep, and was then allowed to keep working and drive the tractor back to the depot on a public road. The council suspended him pending medical evidence and dismissed him for "serious and wilful misconduct in relation to sleeping on the job". The SA Industrial Relations Commission found the council had not investigated why he fell asleep, including possible diesel fumes in the cab, and ordered his re-employment.
Case AU-government-03Report an issue
Story · June 1999 · South Australia, Australia
A worker at a vehicle assembly plant assigned to check car bodies for a serious bonnet panel defect before final assembly was found lying on a bench outside the building with his eyes closed and his check sheets under his head, and was woken by management just after midday. Some vehicles had not been checked. The Commission found on the balance of probabilities that he was asleep during working time, that the employer reasonably believed this, and that dismissal of a worker already on a final warning was not harsh, unjust or unreasonable.
Case AU-manufacturing-05Report an issue
Story · Mar 1999 · New South Wales, Australia
A livestock semi-trailer driver who had been sent on back-to-back cattle, sheep and deer runs across New South Wales and Queensland for three days, with only short sleeps in the truck, fell asleep at about 3.20 am and rolled into a ditch. He was trapped in the wreck for five hours. The court found the employer's instructions breached the legal driving-hours limits in every 24-hour period and exposed him to a clearly foreseeable fatigue crash, rejected contributory negligence because he had told the employer he was fatigued and feared losing his job, and awarded damages.
Case AU-transport-26Report an issue
Story · Dec 1998 · New South Wales, Australia
A young apprentice chef at a cafe drove home at about 2 am after a staff Christmas party organised by his employers, crossed onto the wrong side of the road, swerved back and hit a telegraph pole, suffering catastrophic head injuries. The Compensation Court found the immediate cause of the crash was fatigue, with the driver nodding off to sleep, heightened by a high blood alcohol reading. Because the alcohol contributed, the journey claim was barred and the award went to the employer.
Case AU-retail-05Report an issue
Story · Dec 1998 · Queensland, Australia
A duty electrician at a resort was summarily dismissed after he nodded off near the end of an important meeting, months after a written warning about sleeping on the job. The Queensland Industrial Relations Commission found that nodding off was not a wilful act and that summary dismissal was an extreme outcome, although dismissal with notice would have been justified. The resort was ordered to pay compensation.
Case AU-retail-06Report an issue
Story · Sept 1998 · New South Wales, Australia
An interstate semi-trailer driver who had broken the driving-hours rules for days, falsified his logbook and slept only about an hour in the previous day took methamphetamine to keep going. Severely affected by the drug, he drove his truck across a median strip and into oncoming traffic on a six-lane city road, killing two motorists. The court found he had been driving for hours in a state of exhaustion he knew was dangerous, and imposed a deterrent sentence aimed at drivers tempted to use drugs to overcome fatigue.
Case AU-transport-54Report an issue
Story · Aug 1998 · South Australia, Australia
A logging machine operator in a pine plantation started work at 4.30 am and was found by a director about an hour later sitting in his stationary feller buncher with his eyes closed. He said he was tired and resting his eyes, and was dismissed on the spot. The Commission found he was more likely than not asleep and that this was a valid reason, but the summary dismissal was harsh because he was given no chance to explain; no compensation was awarded because of his conduct after the dismissal.
Case AU-forestry-02Report an issue
Story · June 1998 · Western Australia, Australia
A project officer with a state power network was called out at about 3 am to a cable fault after roughly four hours in bed and worked through the morning without returning to sleep. Driving back around midday to reconnect the power, he felt tired, was yawning and blinking, then drove through a stop sign into a 110 km/h highway and collided with a car, injuring two people. The magistrate found he had 'plenty of warning that he's tired' and that the pressure of his job may have kept him driving. The Supreme Court upheld the convictions, holding that whether he actually fell asleep did not matter and that fatigue needs no expert evidence because it is a common human condition.
Case AU-utilities-02Report an issue
Story · Nov 1997 · Victoria, Australia
A tram driver on a city's overnight tram service drove into the back of another tram, causing extensive damage to both; no passengers were hurt and the driver had minor injuries. The union argued that the lack of a real meal break on the night service caused tiredness and fatigue. The Commission found the most probable explanation was that the driver fell asleep and woke just before the collision, but held the driver still had to drive safely and upheld the summary dismissal.
Case AU-rail-11Report an issue
Story · Oct 1997 · New South Wales, Australia
An apprentice exhibition carpenter worked eight straight days of 10 to 16-hour shifts building motor show stands, with no more than about five hours' sleep before a final shift that ran from 7.30 am to about 3 am. He then went to a hotel with co-workers, drank about three schooners and fell asleep at the wheel on the way home around 5.20 am, suffering severe brain damage. The NSW Supreme Court found the host employer had a duty to offer him a taxi because of the foreseeable risk of work-induced fatigue, but held that the 1.5-hour pub delay and alcohol, layered on top of that fatigue, were the effective cause, so his damages claim against the host and the labour-hire employer failed.
Case AU-construction-03Report an issue
Story · Apr 1997 · Western Australia, Australia
A harbour tug at a major port was assisting a vehicle carrier away from its berth when the tugmaster misread a hand signal and stopped the tug before the towline had been let go, so the rope parted and recoiled into a deckhand, causing severe injuries. The tugmaster had switched from a week of day shifts to night shifts two days earlier and this was his fourth towage job of the night. Investigators found his low alertness and possible acute fatigue, from probable poor-quality sleep after the shift change, contributed to the error.
Case AU-ports-01Report an issue
Story · Dec 1996 · New South Wales, Australia
A director of a stock and station agency drove home at about 1 am from an industry Christmas party he attended for business reasons, and his four-wheel drive left the road on a curve and rolled, leaving him severely injured. The Compensation Court blamed excessive speed alone and found for the employer. The Court of Appeal held that, after 19 to 20 hours awake, fatigue and alcohol materially contributed to the risk and caused the crash, and because the extended work day was connected with his employment, his fault did not bar the journey claim.
Case AU-agriculture-05Report an issue
Story · Aug 1996 · South Australia, Australia
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
Story · July 1996 · Queensland, Australia
A refrigerated cargo ship under the conduct of a coastal pilot ran aground at full speed on a reef in the Great Barrier Reef and was stranded for eight days. The national marine investigator found that, on the balance of probability, the pilot fell asleep, and that chronic fatigue from the pilot's recent work schedule, with a high proportion of nights of disrupted sleep, contributed. There was no formal system to monitor coastal pilots' disrupted sleep, and poor bridge teamwork meant the watch officer did not intervene.
Case AU-maritime-02Report an issue
Story · Feb 1996 · Victoria, Australia
A 43-tonne semi-trailer ran into the back of a small cattle truck on a major interstate highway at dusk, killing the young driver. Investigators found the semi driver had worked continuously over permitted hours for days, his logbook was described as a sham, and police later found him asleep and hard to rouse at the station. He was fined for 46 driving-hours, rest-break and logbook offences, but his culpable driving convictions were overturned twice because the prosecution could not prove fatigue rather than the other truck pulling out caused the crash. The case shows how hours breaches are punished even when fatigue causation cannot be proved.
Case AU-transport-24Report an issue
Story · Sept 1995 · New South Wales, Australia
A counsellor employed by a regional health service drove about three hours on a Sunday evening back to the hospital where she worked and lived in the nurses' home. Her car gradually left the road with no braking, and she lost an eye and suffered serious orthopaedic injuries. The Compensation Court accepted the employer's own submission that she most likely fell asleep, but held that, with no warning signs of drowsiness, falling asleep was not 'fault' that barred a journey claim, and awarded compensation.
Case AU-healthcare-06Report an issue
Story · June 1995 · Queensland, Australia
A bulk carrier ran aground inside the Great Barrier Reef after the officer of the watch fell asleep alone on the bridge for around five hours, missing a planned course change. There was no lookout and no alarm to wake him. The investigator found he was suffering extreme fatigue from a week of poor-quality sleep and a decision not to sleep after leaving a Queensland port, and that the master and senior officers were all significantly fatigued.
Case AU-maritime-03Report an issue
Story · May 1995 · Western Australia, Australia
An emergency services officer at a gold mine, rostered on 12-hour day and night shifts, was found asleep in the computer room around 10.45 pm by his superintendent and was dismissed. He had spent the weekend running a first aid course before his night shifts, leaving only about three hours' rest. The Commission found he was asleep on duty, held that the employer's concern about whether he was rested and alert enough to respond to a mine emergency for a full 12 hours was justified, and dismissed his unfair dismissal claim.
Case AU-mining-14Report an issue
Story · Mar 1995 · South Australia, Australia
A labour-hire fitter servicing winery machinery in the busy pre-vintage season had worked 67, 54, 49 and 50 hours in the four weeks before he rode his motorcycle into the back of a stationary vehicle at about 6.20 am on his way to work, leaving him paraplegic. A sleep expert said work-related fatigue was the most likely explanation, but the tribunal and then the Full Supreme Court held that this left fatigue only a possible cause of his inattention, so no real and substantial link between work and the crash was proved and the claim failed.
Case AU-manufacturing-04Report an issue
Story · Sept 1994 · South Australia, Australia
A truck driver in remote oil and gas fields worked four-week blocks at a site 670 km from his home, and the employer supplied free fuel for workers who drove to site. Near the end of an eight to nine hour drive to start his block, he rolled his vehicle on a straight unsealed road and was left a paraplegic. The tribunal held that fatigue was a possible but unproven cause, yet found the journey compensable because travelling to the remote site formed part of his duties of employment.
Case AU-oilgas-03Report an issue
Story · June 1994 · Victoria, Australia
A supervisor arriving at 4 am found the night crew of a factory powerhouse, which ran the boilers and alarm monitoring, apparently asleep on an inflatable mattress and makeshift beds of chairs with the lights off. The crew said they were only resting after hours of hot, heavy boiler work on a 7 pm to 7.30 am shift, and that resting had been tolerated. The Industrial Relations Court found the employer was entitled to conclude they were asleep, called it grave misconduct and dismissed the claim of three workers who had been sacked.
Case AU-manufacturing-03Report an issue
Story · Mar 1994 · Queensland, Australia
Two weeks after a poultry processor moved its staff from afternoon shifts to a rotating roster with 12-hour overnight shifts, a process worker fell asleep at the wheel at about 6 am driving home after her first 12-hour night shift. The District Court of Queensland accepted she fell asleep and heard expert evidence that the new roster cut average sleep from about 8 hours 17 minutes to 6 hours 51 minutes. The court still dismissed the negligence claim, finding her own activities before the shift (she had been awake almost 24 hours) were the main reason for her sleep loss and that the employer was entitled to assume staff arrived fit for work. The Court of Appeal dismissed her appeal in 1997.
Case AU-food-02Report an issue
Story · Mar 1993 · Western Australia, Australia
A subcontract driver's prime mover and trailer left a major highway at night, crossed the road and struck a water pipeline. The haulage company sued the state road authority, blaming an unmarked culvert, but the District Court rejected the driver's account, noted he had got up mid-morning the previous day and had not slept before the crash, and found driver fatigue was the more probable explanation. The company's claim was dismissed.
Case AU-transport-62Report an issue
Story · Dec 1991 · Western Australia, Australia
A road train driver heading north after a long overnight run drifted into the oncoming lane of a major highway and struck another road train, killing its driver. In the resulting damages case, the Supreme Court of Western Australia rejected the driver's account, found he had fallen asleep at the wheel and that his lack of sleep the night before had increased that risk, and gave judgment against his employer.
Case AU-transport-61Report an issue
Story · Nov 1990 · Tasmania, Australia
A deep-sea trawler heading for the fishing grounds ran at full speed for about 15 minutes after its master, alone in the wheelhouse, fell asleep, and grounded in a salmon farm, causing extensive damage and the escape of about 4,000 fish. The master had slept less than six hours in the previous 48. The Federal Court found the owners knew of his tendency to work excessive hours, gave no watchkeeping directions and had not fitted available watch or radar alarms, so they could not limit their liability to about $34,000 and faced damages likely in the hundreds of thousands.
Case AU-maritime-07Report an issue
Story · May 1986 · South Australia, Australia
A young police officer spent the day at court as a witness, could barely sleep before starting a night shift, and had been awake about 22 hours when he fell asleep driving a police van alone at 6.45 am, crossing into an oncoming car and hitting a pole. His sergeant knew he had been at court all day but still sent him out on his own. Accepting expert sleep-science evidence that his chance of falling asleep at that hour was 'extremely high', the Supreme Court of South Australia found the state negligent: the simple precaution was to send him out with another officer.
Case AU-emergency-04Report an issue
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.
