The case followed an incident that occurred to a worker employed by the responsible agency. One of the activities workers may be required to engage in as part of their employment is the placement of a tyre deflation device (“TDD”) across a roadway in order to safely conclude vehicle pursuits or to immobilise a vehicle. In doing so, workers are required to position themselves close to the expected path of the target vehicle, which is often travelling at high speed. It is a plainly hazardous activity which poses a high risk of injury, including fatal injury.

By section 19(1) of the WHS Act, the agency owed a primary duty of care to its workers to ensure their health and safety, so far as is reasonably practicable. It was therefore obliged to ensure workers received adequate training in the deployment of TDDs.

The agency failed to comply with this duty. That failure exposed the worker involved in the incident to a risk of death or serious injury. On 26 June 2021, the worker died in the course of deploying a TDD.

In their 10 years of employment, the worker completed only around five hours of training in the use of TDDs. That training was primarily theoretical and lacked the cognitive demands of a ‘real-world’ context, thereby not adequately preparing workers for a dynamic operational situation. By the time of their death, the inadequacies in relation to their TDD training had existed for almost 10 years. The inadequacies persisted despite the defendant being notified of multiple incidents of TDD-related injuries during that time.

His Honour held that it was incumbent on the defendant to provide adequate training to minimise the risk so far as reasonably practicable, and that the offence had occurred over a protracted period, there was inadequate training as well as processes & systems in place to ensure the training was to be conducted on a regular basis.