Fatigue is foreseeable. So is the duty to manage it.

Persec Services · First published October 2023

A 2023 conviction in Victoria put a fatigue-related death back on the workplace-safety agenda. The case is worth knowing about — not for the headlines, but for what it says about how courts now view fatigue as a foreseeable, manageable hazard.

The case

Yarra Valley mechanic YJ Auto Repairs Pty Ltd was convicted and fined $115,000 following the death of a roadside-assistance driver in a fatigue-related crash in 2018. The company pleaded guilty to failing to provide and maintain safe systems of work, and failing to provide information, instruction or training. The driver was employed by YJ Auto Repairs, which was sub-contracted by the RACV to operate a roadside-assistance service.

It was routine for the firm’s two roadside-assistance drivers to work 96-hour on-call shifts over four days and nights. At the time of the incident, the driver had been on-call for 89 hours and had been working for 17 hours from the first call-out he received on the morning of 9 March 2018 until the collision in the early hours of the following day, when he ran off the road and struck a tree at Healesville. Evidence at the crash site indicated he had fallen asleep at the wheel.

The company failed to provide training on how to protect against fatigue or have a safe system of work related to fatigue. It was reasonably practicable for the company to have procedures and work schedules in place to minimise the risk — such as 12-hour maximum shifts and/or eight-hour breaks between shifts — along with information and training on the risks of fatigue and how to prevent it.

The RACV was convicted and fined $475,000 over the same death in December 2021.

What WorkSafe says

WorkSafe Victoria Executive Director of Health and Safety Narelle Beer said fatigue goes beyond feeling drowsy — it leads to physical, emotional or mental exhaustion that prevents people from functioning safely. It is up to employers to manage work schedules, rostering and workloads to ensure workers have adequate rest, and to make sure training and support on fatigue is available.

WorkSafe’s practical guidance for employers includes:

• Set realistic workloads and eliminate or reduce the need for extended hours or overtime.
• Ensure adequate staffing and resources so that excessive demands aren’t placed on individuals.
• Schedule leave, training, and other commitments deliberately, with a process for managing unplanned absences.
• Develop and promote policies that identify, prevent and manage fatigue — with maximum daily and weekly hours, time-of-day considerations, and controls on overtime, shift-swapping and on-call duties.
• Provide adequate breaks between shifts, with enough recovery time (including travel, family time, leisure, exercise).
• Encourage workers to speak up if they are feeling fatigued and unable to work safely.

“It is unacceptable for workers to be pushed beyond their physical and mental limits day after day. As this case tragically highlights, managing fatigue can be the difference between someone going home at the end of their shift or losing their life at work.”

— Narelle Beer, WorkSafe Victoria

The Persec view

Fatigue sits alongside aggression and stress as one of the “invisible” workplace risks: rarely acute, almost always cumulative, and easy to defer until something goes wrong. For our clients in transport, healthcare, community services and on-call industries, the lesson from this case is the same one we keep coming back to: documented systems matter, training matters, and the people most exposed to the risk usually know where the gaps are. Ask them.