Chef worked for 22 days in a row before fatal head-on crash

Perumal Dinakaran's Suzuki Swift crossed the centre line and collided with a logging truck in May 2018. Photo / Warren Buckland

A young chef killed in a head-on collision on the Hawke’s Bay Expressway had worked 22 days in a row for up to 90 hours a week before the crash.

A coroner is warning of the dangers of driving while fatigued after investigating the death of Perumal Dinakaran, 24, an Indian national who was living in Napier when he crashed in 2018.

Dinakaran was working two jobs, to pay off debts and pursue his dream of opening his own restaurant in India.

In the evenings, he worked as a chef at a Napier bar. Three weeks before his fatal collision with a logging truck in May 2018, he started a second job delivering bread to supermarkets, starting work at 5am.

Coroner Heidi Wrigley found Dinakaran died from a head injury sustained in a car crash caused when his Suzuki Swift drifted into the lane of an oncoming log truck due to his “dangerously fatigued” state.

Dinakaran hadworked as a chef at the Water Bar on West Quay, Napier in the six months before the crash. His hours varied but he worked 40 hours a week on average, finishing between 9pm and 10pm most nights.

His second job as a bread merchandiser with George Weston Foods (GWF) involved restocking bread on the shelves of several supermarkets, for another 27 “guideline” hours a week in split shifts between 5am and 2.30pm.

“However, it is apparent Mr Dinakaran worked longer for GWF than his guideline hours,” Coroner Wrigley said.

Dinakaran had taken the evening off from his kitchen job on the night before he died, enjoying a takeaway and a movie with a friend.

However, CCTV footage from Pak’n’Save supermarket in Napier showed Dinakaran at work at 4.46am on the day of the crash – earlier than his contracted start time.

The crash happened on the expressway south of the Links Road roundabout about 7.40am. The weather was fine and the road dry.

No drugs or alcohol were found in Dinakaran’s system – only caffeine and traces of nicotine.

Following motorists saw the Suzuki move across the centreline in a “gradual straight line” on a long left-hand curve.

A former ambulance driver in one of the following vehicles described the Suzuki drifting into the north-bound lane “as if (the driver) had fallen asleep or had a stroke or something”.

The coroner found the reason Dinakaran veered into the path of the truck was “due to his fatigue which involved him either falling asleep or experiencing a microsleep immediately prior to the collision”.

A sleep expert, Professor Leigh Signal, provided an analysis of Dinakaran’s “sleep debt” in the days and weeks leading up to the crash, concluding that he was likely to be fatigued at the time of the collision.

Coroner Wrigley recommended that WorkSafe and the transport agency Waka Kotahi work together with industry organisations and fatigue science experts to develop resources and training on the topic of driving while fatigued.

She also wanted collaboration between government organisations and businesses to identify the issues which increase the likelihood of driving while fatigued.

At the time of Dinakaran’s death, GWF paid for his body to be repatriated to India.

The company told the coroner that since the crash, it was checking on employees’ secondary employment and obtaining declarations of the total number of hours worked, updated every six months.

It now required merchandisers to work no more than 50 hours per week in all their jobs.

It had identified fatigue as a “threat to life” in its business, required merchandisers to complete driver awareness training online, and discussed fatigue in regular health and safety talks.