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Vehicle safety
Last update February 2022
What are your vehicle safety obligations?
You have a duty under health and safety legislation to ensure the safety of your workers while they are working for your business, including when they are:
- required to drive or travel in a vehicle for work, e.g. truck drivers; and
- exposed to vehicles in your workplace, e.g. a worker who walks through a loading dock with traffic.
Case Law: SafeWork NSW v CRS NSW Pty Ltd (2017)
In SafeWork NSW v CRS NSW Pty Ltd (2017), CRS NSW was found guilty under the Work Health and Safety (WHS) Act following a worker being engulfed by a fireball created by ruptured pipelines in a company vehicle.
The director of CRS NSW had tried to remove the emulsified substance on the side of a company vehicle by heating the vehicle with an open-flame LPG torch, which also had ruptured pipelines with traces of kerosene in them. As a result of this, the LPG flame ignited the kerosene, creating a fireball that engulfed a worker on the property next door.
The Court found this remodification went directly against the manufacturer’s recommendations, and neither the director nor CRS NSW performed a risk assessment before deciding to use kerosene in the vehicle. The fireball incident was declared a breach of both the director and the company’s duty of care. It was also a breach of duty for safely operating plant under section 26 of the WHS Act.
CRS NSW was fined $160,000 and the director was fined $40,000.