Norsewood tradesman Tony Saunders crashed van while blinded by sun, coroner finds

Tony Saunders, of Norsewood. Photo / Facebook

The death of a tradesman who crashed into the back of a truck while blinded by the sun has prompted a warning about the dangers of sunstrike.

Tony Saunders left his home in Norsewood on May 13 last year at 7am and headed to work at a metal recycler where he was a machine operator and driver.

It was a sunny morning, with the sun at a low angle, and there were roadworks on his usual route to work.

According to a coroner’s decision released today, several cars in front of him had stopped to wait for a traffic light to turn green. At some point, Saunders crashed into the back of a truck waiting at those lights.

Saunders was pinned inside his van. Multiple people tried to help him, emergency services were called, but he died at the scene.

The driver of the truck he crashed into told the coroner that the sun was harsh and he’d had his visor down, and had needed to adjust his position to avoid looking directly at the sun.

When the car in front of him came to a stop, he slowed his truck down and then stopped for several minutes waiting for a traffic light in front of them to turn green.

While he was waiting, he felt the impact of something behind him shunt his truck forward half a metre, but he had not heard any braking before the impact.

A Serious Crash Unit investigation noted that road works were being set up at the time, and the sun was at a low angle, which was affecting the vision of drivers.

Coroner Rachael Schmidt-McCleave found that Saunders was likely affected by solar glare.

“The signs notifying of the road works were placed north of the crash scene, meaning had Mr Saunders not seen the amber lights ahead and the slowed/stopped traffic, he would have had no way of knowing the hazard confronting him,” she said.

Schmidt-McCleave also found that there were traces of cannabis in Saunders’ system, and she couldn’t rule it out as possibly having an effect on his reaction time.

“I consider that, on the balance of probabilities, this death could have been prevented if Mr Saunders had been aware of the approaching road works, had sun glare not been a factor, and had Mr Saunders not been driving while under the influence of cannabis,” she found.

In the past five years (2021-2025) there were 15 fatal crashes, nearly 100 serious injury crashes and 500 minor injury crashes where sunstrike was deemed likely to have played a part in the crash.

“Another way of putting it would be that each year we have about three fatal crashes, 20 serious crashes and 100 minor injury crashes officially deemed to involve sunstrike,” AA’s manager of communications, research and road safety, Dylan Thomsen said.

“The AA thinks there will be other crashes involving sunstrike that don’t end up having it reported in the official data, so we suspect the true number of crashes is likely to be a bit higher than these numbers.”

The coroner recommended that drivers take care when driving at sunrise or sunset, and be extra careful in winter when the sun is lower in the sky, wear sunglasses, keep the windshield clean and if drivers still can’t see, pull over until visibility improves.

Coroner Schmidt-McCleave also noted that other coroners had noted many times the dangers of driving under the influence of drugs.