$1.43m fine follows fatigue-related driver fatality

Following a fatigue-related driver fatality, warehousing and logistics company Onkar Group Pty Ltd, trading as Bakeology, and director Maninder Singh Nagi, 48, have been convicted and fined a total of $1.43 million.

In August 2022, the delivery driver’s van drifted into the path of an oncoming truck at Kialla West, south of Shepparton, 12 hours into an overnight shift delivering baked goods to Albury and various locations in Victoria’s north.

As a result of the collision, the 27-year-old delivery driver died, while the truck driver was unharmed.

A WorkSafe Victoria investigation found that, prior to the incident, the driver had completed the same 796 km delivery run for 17 consecutive nights, with most including shifts exceeding 12 hours, without adequate breaks of time to rest and recover between shifts.

WorkSafe Victoria found that it was reasonably practicable for Onkar Group and Nagi to reduce the risk of serious injury or death posed by slower reaction times, lapses in attention or falling asleep while driving, by providing or maintaining a system of work that ensured the driver did not work:

• more than 10 hours in any 11-hour period without rest breaks of at least 15 continuous minutes;
• more than 12 hours in any 24-hour period without a minimum break of seven continuous hours stationary rest time out of a vehicle;
• more than 72 hours in any seven-day period without a minimum break of 24 continuous hours stationary rest time out of a vehicle; and
• more than 144 hours in any 14-day period without a minimum rest break of two consecutive nights between 10 pm and 8 am.
   

Information about the causes, signs, symptoms and identification of fatigue, as well as instruction and training in the prevention of fatigue, including the need for breaks with continuous rest periods, should also have been provided by the company and Nagi.

“Driver fatigue puts workers and the general public at serious risk, and the consequences can be even more devastating when vehicles collide with other motorists or dwellings,” WorkSafe Victoria Chief Health and Safety Officer Sam Jenkin said.

“This incident is a tragic example that shows how setting realistic workloads and safe policies can be the difference between a worker going home at the end of the day or tragically losing their life.”

After earlier pleading guilty to five charges under the Occupational Health and Safety Act, Onkar Group and Nagi were sentenced in the Wangaratta County Court on 22 September 2025.

For recklessly placing a person at a workplace in danger of serious injury, the company was convicted and fined $1.1 million, and an aggregate $250,000 for failing to provide a workplace that was safe and without risks to health and failing to ensure people other than employees weren’t exposed to risks to their health or safety.

For being an officer of a company that failed to provide a workplace that was safe and without risks to health and failed to ensure people other than employees weren’t exposed to risks to their health or safety, contraventions that were solely attributable to his failure to take reasonable care, Nagi was convicted and fined an aggregate $80,000.

Also issued by the court was an adverse publicity order — requiring them to publicise the offence, its consequences and the penalty imposed in an industry publication.

To reduce the risk of fatigue, WorkSafe Victoria advised that employers should:

• set realistic workloads and eliminate or reduce the need to work extended hours or overtime;
• schedule an adequate number of workers and other resources to do the job to avoid placing excessive demands on staff;
• appropriately schedule leave and other staff commitments such as training and ensure there is a process for managing unplanned absences;
• develop policies and procedures to identify, prevent and manage fatigue — including maximum daily work hours, maximum average weekly hours, and consideration of time of day and work-related travel — and ensure they are implemented and promoted;
• control overtime, shift-swapping and on-call duties;
• provide adequate breaks between shifts to allow employees enough recovery time (including travel, family time, leisure and socialising, and exercise time); and
• enable staff to speak up if they are feeling fatigued and unable to work without risk.
   

Information of work-related fatigue is available here, via the WorkSafe Victoria website.

Image credit: iStock.com/Michele Jackson. Stock image used is for illustrative purposes only.