Company and director fined $1.43 million over fatigued driver's death
04 Oct 2025•BlueSafe Team•Source: WorkSafe VIC
A bakery business and its director have been fined a combined $1.43 million after a fatigued delivery driver died in a collision in northern Victoria. The driver had worked the same delivery route for 17 consecutive nights before the crash.
Onkar Group Pty Ltd, trading as Bakeology, and director Maninder Singh Nagi, 48, were sentenced in the Wangaratta County Court after previously pleading guilty to five charges under the Occupational Health and Safety Act.
The company was convicted and fined $1.1 million for recklessly placing a person at a workplace in danger of serious injury, plus an aggregate $250,000 for failing to provide a safe workplace and protect people other than employees from health or safety risks. Nagi was convicted and fined an aggregate $80,000 for officer offences relating to those failures, which were solely attributable to his failure to take reasonable care.
The court also imposed an adverse publicity order requiring the company and Nagi to publish details of the offence, its consequences and the penalty in an industry publication.
The court heard the 27-year-old driver was 12 hours into an overnight shift delivering baked goods to Albury and locations across northern Victoria when his van drifted into an oncoming truck at Kialla West, south of Shepparton, in August 2022. He died in the collision. The truck driver was unharmed.
WorkSafe's investigation found the driver had completed the same 796-kilometre delivery run for 17 nights in a row. Most shifts exceeded 12 hours, with inadequate time between shifts for rest and recovery.
It was reasonably practicable for the company and Nagi to provide or maintain a system of work that reduced the risk of serious injury or death arising from slower reactions, lapses in attention or falling asleep while driving.
They also needed to give the driver information about fatigue's causes, signs, symptoms and identification, along with instruction and training on preventing fatigue, including the need for breaks with continuous rest periods.
WorkSafe Chief Health and Safety Officer Sam Jenkin said motorists should be able to trust that people working behind the wheel were not being pushed beyond their mental and physical limits. "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."
How Blue Safe can help: Our free WHS self-check can help you review your business's approach to workplace health and safety and identify areas for closer attention, including employer duties and officer responsibilities. Take the free WHS self-check