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

The sleep disorder nobody screened for.

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

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7 October 2004

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

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

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

The driver opposite

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was entirely preventable.

At work
At home
In life

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

It is not a one-off

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

Nov 2014 · New Zealand
Teacher driving school group after days of hiking falls asleep at the wheel; teacher and student killed in collision with milk tanker
- Safety
An overseas school teacher driving a group of students on an outdoor education trip crossed the centreline of a state highway into the path of a milk tanker, about 1.45 hours after the last rest break and after several days of hiking. The teacher and a student were killed. The crash analysis concluded the driver had fallen asleep moments before the crash, and a fatigue expert pointed to sustained physical and mental activity and cumulative sleep deprivation. The coroner recommended that the government's transport and education ministries review policies for preventing driver fatigue, including an awake, trained observer in vehicles on outdoor education excursions.
Case NZ-education-01Report an issue
Mar 2016 · New Zealand
Tour van driver who likely fell asleep at 94 km/h sentenced after passenger killed
- Safety
- Legal
- Financial
A worker for an overseas tour company, driving a rented passenger van carrying a tour group, failed to take a left-hand bend, crossed the centre line and ran about 150 metres on the wrong side of the road before hitting a culvert. One unrestrained passenger was killed and five others were injured. The District Court heard the driver conceded he might have fallen asleep at about 94 km/h, and that he was not licensed to drive a passenger service vehicle.
Case NZ-transport-05Report an issue
Jul 2002 · Taranaki, New Zealand
Driver awake about 16 hours likely fell asleep; freight train derails, killing the driver
- Safety
A freight train derailed on a 45 km/h curve in Taranaki at about 1.50am after accelerating steadily for about 70 seconds; the driver was killed and the other crew member, the rail operator, was seriously injured. The Transport Accident Investigation Commission found the crew's loss of attention was consistent with having fallen asleep, that the driver had been awake for about 16 hours after a maximum of about five hours' sleep, and that the rail operator had also dozed during the trip. Alcohol consumed before duty was also listed among the causal factors.
Case NZ-rail-15Report an issue
Mar 2003 · Otago, New Zealand
Court infers ambulance driver who worked two jobs most likely fell asleep at the wheel; motorist killed in head-on, conviction upheld
- Safety
- Legal
- Financial
An ambulance travelling towards a city with a patient in the front seat crossed onto the wrong side of a state highway and collided head-on with a car, killing its driver. The ambulance driver worked as a casual ambulance officer and as a registered nurse, and the District Court heard evidence of the hours she had worked in the week before and of her struggling to keep her eyes open at a meeting. Having rejected a claimed steering failure, the District Court found the most likely explanation was that she had fallen asleep, and convicted her of careless use of a motor vehicle causing death. The High Court dismissed her appeal.
Case NZ-emergency-01Report an issue
Oct 2013 · Manawatu-Whanganui, New Zealand
Line technician ignores 7 to 10 warning drifts, falls asleep driving work truck home; one killed
- Safety
- Legal
- Financial
A young line technician working for the national grid operator on lines in the Wellington region was driving a work truck home for the weekend when he fell asleep, crossed the centre line and hit two oncoming cars, killing one driver and injuring two others. A following truck driver saw the ute drift off the road seven to ten times in the 20 minutes before the crash, and the driver had planned to stop in a town on the way because of his fatigue. The High Court upheld a sentence of 300 hours' community work, finding that ignoring repeated warnings made falling asleep at the wheel particularly serious.
Case NZ-utilities-01Report an issue
Mar 2009 · New Zealand
Truck driver who began falling asleep after almost 15 hours' work jailed for killing cyclist
- Safety
- Legal
A truck driver who had started work at 2.30am but logged a 4am start had worked almost 15 hours, and driven over seven hours without the required break, when he began to fall asleep at the wheel at about 5.45pm and struck and killed a cyclist. Records showed he had breached driving-hour rules 13 times in the two months before the crash. He was convicted of reckless driving causing death and falsifying his logbook and sent to prison.
Case NZ-transport-04Report an issue
Mar 2019 · Waikato, New Zealand
Truck crosses centreline in head-on truck collision; coroner calls for fatigue-detection and lane-departure devices
- Safety
A truck driver was killed when his truck crossed the centreline on a state highway in Waikato and collided head-on with another truck. Police crash investigators said it was possible he was fatigued and had fallen asleep. His truck had no lane-departure warning or driver-fatigue camera, and the road had no centreline rumble strips; the coroner said either device may have alerted him, and recommended the national transport agency gather crash data to support requiring such devices, particularly in commercial vehicles on long, repetitive journeys.
Case NZ-transport-19Report an issue
May 2012 · Otago, New Zealand
Courier driver on 3.45am start after possible rest-period breach likely lapsed into microsleep; fatal crash
- Safety
- Legal
A contract courier driver who regularly left home at 3.30am failed to negotiate a left-hand bend in Otago and hit a power pole, dying at the scene. Commercial vehicle investigators calculated he could have breached his rest-period obligations, having been at the courier company's depot until about 6pm the previous evening before starting at about 3.45am, and found the company had not followed its own work time controls or monitored its contractor; an improvement notice was issued. The coroner considered a microsleep at that early hour the more likely cause and asked the national transport agency and police to re-appraise driving hours issues, noting courier drivers were not required to keep logbooks.
Case NZ-transport-14Report an issue
Jun 2024 · New Zealand
Police officer driving home after extended shift falls asleep, crosses centre line and hits oncoming car
- Safety
- Legal
A police officer driving home in an unmarked police car at the end of an extended shift fell asleep at the wheel, crossed the centre line and collided with an oncoming vehicle. No one was significantly injured but the police car was written off. The officer was charged with careless driving, completed diversion, and went through a confidential employment process; the Independent Police Conduct Authority was satisfied police took appropriate action.
Case NZ-emergency-04Report an issue
Jan 2016 · Northland, New Zealand
Young deckhand on first solo night watch falls asleep after limited sleep; fishing vessel grounds in cave and is lost
- Safety
- Legal
- Financial
A young deckhand on a commercial fishing vessel was woken after about one to three and a quarter hours' sleep and put on watch alone for the first time at night while the master slept. Tired from his day's work and limited sleep, he fell asleep, and the vessel steamed past its waypoint and grounded in a cave, capsized and was lost; the crew swam ashore and were rescued. The company that owned the vessel had no effective system to stop fatigued crew going on watch, and the watch alarm had been disabled without the crew knowing it existed.
Case NZ-maritime-16Report an issue

What he built alongside Melissa

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

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

The impact so far

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

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

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

How we grade our evidence

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

Daniel PlattCo-founder and CEO

Risk & Safety

The question an investigator will ask

In New Zealand, the Civil Aviation Authority already refers pilots who score 3 or more on the STOP-Bang sleep apnoea questionnaire to a sleep physician. Everywhere else, fatigue is a risk you must manage under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, and after an incident you will be asked how you did it.

Melissa’s story · Founder

Sleep starts at home.

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

Back to About us

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