Prosecution Details

Charge 1 & 2 - Being a responsible person at a workplace failed to ensure that a record conforming to the requirements of regulation 3.134(2) of the Occupational Safety and Health Regulations 1996 and being in respect of the work time, breaks from driving, and non work time of a commercial vehicle driver who was required to drive a commercial vehicle that formed the whole or part of the workplace, was established and kept current; contrary to regulations 3.134(1) of the Occupational Safety and Health Regulations made under the Occupational Safety and Health Act 1984.

Charge 3, 4 & 5 - Being a responsible person at a workplace failed to ensure that a commercial vehicle driver who was required to drive a commercial vehicle that formed the whole or part of the workplace, did so in accordance with regulation 3.132 of the Occupational Safety and Health Regulations 1996 contrary to regulation 3.131 of the Occupational Safety and Health Regulations 1996 made under the Occupational Safety and Health Act 1984.

Offence dates were   

28th July, 2008 and 14th October, 2009, 7th August, 2008 and 11th November, 2009, 1st June, 2008 and 1st August, 2008, 1st June, 2008 and 7th August, 2008, 1st June, 2008 and 17th August, 2008

The Accused is a medium sized trucking company which carries on a general freight business from its premises at 2 Quarimor Road, Bibra Lake.  Drivers are employed to transport freight across Australia.  On occasions, trips can be extremely long in journey and may last for more than two weeks.  Drivers are paid on a per kilometre rate. 

Following an investigation of the fatigue management practices of the Accused in the months of July and August 2008, WorkSafe determined that the Accused failed to establish or keep records for trips undertaken by two of the drivers and failed to ensure that drivers observed fatigue management regulations on three occasions. 

In particular:

- The Accused did not establish or keep a record of the work time, breaks from driving or non-work time for a trip undertaken by its one of its drivers on 29 July 2008.

- The Accused did not establish or keep a record of the work time, breaks from driving or non-work time for a trip undertaken by another of its driver on 8-9 August 2008.

- The Accused's driver commenced work at 6.30 a.m. on 28 July 2008, refuelled at a fuel station in Ceduna, South Australia, at approximately 8.13 a.m. on 28 July 2008 and drove to a fuel station in Coolgardie, Western Australia, at 1.03 a.m. on 29 July 2008 without a 7 hour non-work period.

- The Accused's driver drove from a fuel station at Penong, South Australia, at approximately 7.24 a.m. on 13 July 2008 to a fuel station in Southern Cross, Western Australia, at approximately 2.21 a.m. on 14 July 2008 and drove further to a fuel station in Meckering, Western Australia, Western Australia, at approximately 7.31 a.m. on 14 July 2008.

- The above driver also drove from 6:00am to 11:30pm on 4 August 2008 without a 7 hour non-work period contrary to regulation 3.132(2)(a) of the regulations in circumstances where the Accused did not have effective systems in place to ensure that he observed the fatigue management requirement.

If the Accused conducted suitable checks of fatigue management sheets and fuel dockets it would have detected a number of irregularities and failures by drivers to comply with record keeping and fatigue management requirements. 

The drivers were not told to include non-driving work time on fatigue management sheets, did not know who was responsible for checking their fatigue management sheets, had not been asked about any irregularities or failures to observe fatigue management requirements and were not aware of what would happen if they failed to observe fatigue management requirements.

The Accused plead guilty and was convicted.

Please note that the charges have a global fine. While a penalty is imposed on each charge it is for the global fine and not a separate amount for each charge.