by Cam Lucadou-Wells
A Dandenong South gas supplier has been fined $50,000 without conviction after its truck lost a wheel, overturned and spilled up to 100 gas bottles on Eastlink.
Supagas Pty Ltd was found unanimously guilty by a Victorian County Court jury of two workplace safety charges in failing to ensure the safety of employees as well as non-employees and members of the public.
Each charge was punishable by a maximum fine of more than $1.4 million.
The truck rolled-over near the Monash Freeway overpass about 3pm on 14 January 2019, with gas cylinders spread on the tollway and wedged under the truck.
At the time, there were reportedly smells of leaking gas at the scene.
The driver reportedly clambered out of the truck’s shattered windscreen, and was taken to Dandenong Hospital with soft tissue injuries.
For hours, the road’s southbound lanes and most of the northbound lanes were closed while crews righted the truck, cleaned up the spill and repaired the road.
In sentencing on 13 February, Judge Peter Lauritsen found the jury was satisfied that “improperly tensioned” wheel nuts had caused a cracked wheel rim, and in turn for the wheel to separate from the truck.
In its verdict, the jury ruled it was reasonably practicable for Supagas to eliminate or reduce the risk, which put workers and the public in peril of serious injury or death.
Prosecutors had argued this could have been done in at least one of four ways.
The jury didn’t specify which of these methods should have been followed, but were most likely to find it was reasonably practicable for Supagas to have installed wheel nut indicators, Judge Lauritsen said.
After the crash, Supagas introduced “inexpensive” wheel nut indicators, which ensure slackened tensioning was “instantly noticeable”.
Other methods submitted by the prosecution such as requiring drivers to do checks or monthly mechanic checks across Supagas’s large truck fleet were less plausible.
Most expert witnesses stated that the wheel-rim cracking was “almost impossible” to see with the naked eye, the judge said.
Despite the potentially grave dangers, Judge Lauritsen ruled it was not a gross breach of OHS standards partly due to the risk from improperly tensioned wheel nuts being “largely unknown” within the industry.
He ruled the breach’s gravity as “low or very low”, as well as being “exceptional, atypical and out of character” for Supagas.
In mitigation, Supagas had no prior convictions.
The firm had since introduced wheel-nuts indicators – even though it was not required legislatively or by Work Safe improvement notices.
Supagas had also started a $12 million program to progressively replace its truck fleet to avoid a repeat of the Eastlink rollover.
It had effectively “rehabilitated” itself since the crash, Judge Lauritsen said.
The judge concurred with Supagas’s argument against a conviction – including the impact on it renewing its major-hazard-facility licence as well as on its reputation, its customers and suppliers.
In 2023, Supagas was fined $550,000 without conviction after being found guilty by a County Court jury on two workplace safety charges.
On that occasion, a driver from another business had been permanently disabled when Supagas oxygen and acetylene cylinders exploded in his ute in Bayswater.
The cylinders had been picked up from a Supagas store and placed sideways, unsecured in the ute’s enclosed rear compartment.
