Charles Dawson: What driving half a billion kilometres has taught us about driver fatigue
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
As Australia continues to strengthen its approach to heavy vehicle safety and fatigue management, our understanding of driver fatigue is evolving too. While we’re still building our presence in Australia, across the Tasman it’s a different story. Since launching in New Zealand in 2014, we’ve racked up half a billion kilometres of driving on NZ roads, giving us a unique window into driver fatigue and what the data can tell us about this critical safety issue.
Since expanding AutoSense into Australia, we’ve been having more conversations with local fleets about what effective fatigue management looks like in practice. And it’s a far more complex picture than many of us once believed.
Recent compliance data reinforces why the issue remains so important. The National Heavy Vehicle Regulator recorded nearly 5,000 fatigue-related breaches nationally in 2025[1]. More broadly, Australia recorded 4.8 lives lost per 100,000 people for the 12 months ending July 2026, including 225 road deaths involving heavy vehicles in the past 12 months – 22.3% higher than the previous year[2]. While those heavy vehicle fatalities cannot all be attributed to fatigue, they reinforce the importance of continuing to address the risks we can influence.
For many years, fatigue management quite rightly focused on work-time rules, mandatory breaks and ensuring drivers had opportunities to rest. Those safeguards remain fundamental. But experience tells us they are only part of the solution.
The reality is that fatigue begins long before someone gets behind the wheel. It develops through disrupted sleep, changing routines, underlying health conditions, operational pressures and the cumulative demands of everyday life. By the time a driver shows obvious signs of fatigue, the contributing factors have often been building for days.
Australian guidance supports this broader understanding of fatigue. Austroads’ Assessing Fitness to Drive guidance identifies prior sleep deprivation, poor sleep habits, irregular sleep-wake schedules, sedative medications and alcohol as potential contributors to excessive daytime sleepiness. It also notes that less than five hours of sleep before driving is strongly associated with motor vehicle crash risk[3].
Perhaps the biggest shift in our thinking is recognising fatigue is not a sign of poor judgement or a lack of professionalism. In our experience, it often affects highly experienced, conscientious drivers who simply don’t realise how their alertness has changed.
That’s why the conversation is moving beyond compliance and towards understanding the human factors that influence safety. AutoSense Fatigue and Sleep Specialist Katrina Aubrey works with individual drivers to provide tailored recommendations to restore alertness, health and performance. Her advisory work regularly leads to sleep apnoea diagnoses, helping drivers address an underlying cause of fatigue and reduce the risk of further events. It demonstrates how early intervention can improve both health and safety outcomes, especially when combined with a supportive workplace culture.
As this example shows, technology will continue to play an increasingly important role in fatigue management, but it isn’t the whole answer. The fleets making the greatest progress are those that combine data with education, supportive leadership, thoughtful rostering and open conversations about wellbeing. They recognise that technology can identify risk, but it’s people who ultimately manage it.
That represents an important shift for our industry. Fatigue management is no longer just about complying with the rules. It’s about understanding the people behind the wheel and creating workplaces where they can perform at their safest.
*Charles Dawson is chief executive at AutoSense.
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