Too Tired to Drive Home? When Work-Related Fatigue Causes an Accident

For many regional Queensland workers, travelling long distances for work is part of the job.

You might work at a mine, construction site, property, or other remote workplace. After several long shifts, sometimes overnight, you need to drive several hours to get home.

But what happens if you are injured in a crash because you were exhausted after work? Could your employer be responsible?

The answer depends on the circumstances.

However, Queensland courts have recognised that an employer's responsibility for worker safety can, in some cases, extend beyond the workplace and into the journey home.

A long drive home can be part of the risk

Fatigue affects concentration, reaction times, decision-making and a person's ability to recognise just how tired they are. It can also cause "microsleeps", where a person briefly falls asleep without realising it. This is particularly important for workers who finish long shifts and then drive hundreds of kilometres home.

In Kerle v BM Alliance Coal Operations Pty Ltd [2016] QSC 304, a Queensland worker had completed four consecutive 12-hour night shifts before starting a roughly 430-kilometre drive home.

About 300 kilometres into the journey, he crashed and suffered a serious brain injury.

The Court found fatigue was a significant contributing cause and held three parties responsible, including his employer and the mine operator. Important factors included the long night shifts, extended wakefulness, the lengthy drive, the remote workplace and the employers' knowledge that workers regularly undertook long journeys home.

But not every crash after work is the employer's responsibility

The Kerle decision does not mean an employer is automatically responsible whenever a worker crashes after a tiring shift.

A later case, Coalroc Contractors Pty Ltd v Matinca (No 2) [2023] NSWCA 127, highlights this point.

Mr Matinca had worked three consecutive 12-hour shifts before driving approximately 260–270 kilometres home. His vehicle later left the road. Fatigue was one possible explanation, but there were other possibilities, including speed, wet roads and momentary inattention.

The NSW Court of Appeal found that fatigue had not been proved to be the probable cause of that particular accident. Showing that fatigue could have caused a crash was not enough.

What will the court consider?

If you are injured while travelling home after work, the circumstances of your work and your journey may be important.

A court may consider:

• How many hours and shifts you had worked.
• Whether you had been working night or rotating shifts.
• How much sleep and recovery time you had.
• How far you had to drive home.
• Whether the workplace was remote.
• Whether your employer knew workers regularly drove long distances after their shifts.
• Whether accommodation or transport was available.
• What fatigue training and safety procedures were provided.
• Whether those procedures were actually implemented.
• Whether fatigue probably caused your particular accident.

The employer's written fatigue policy is not necessarily the end of the story. What matters can be whether the policy was actually understood, followed, monitored and enforced.

What if you chose to drive home?

This does not necessarily mean you cannot have a claim.

In Kerle, the Court considered the long journey home to be an inevitable consequence of the remote nature of the employment, even though the worker was not contractually required to drive his own vehicle.

For regional Queensland workers, factors such as the lack of public transport, the distance from home, the nature of the roster and the employer's knowledge of workers' travel arrangements may therefore be important.

Injured after a long work trip?

If you have been seriously injured in a crash after completing a demanding work roster, don't automatically assume it is simply a CTP claim.

Keep your rosters, timesheets, work emails and messages, fatigue-management documents and details of your accommodation and travel arrangements. Evidence about your shifts, sleep, journey and the circumstances of the crash may be important in establishing whether fatigue caused your accident.

Please reach out to Allison and Rachel so that we can help you to work out your options.