Employer-directed travel accident: NSW workers compensation guide

Employer-directed travel accident can occur through collision while following a direct travel instruction and injury during a required pickup or stop. The incident history should identify the task, equipment, location and sequence of events rather than relying on the job title alone.

People commonly exposed include workers sent to another site, depot, client or training venue and employees called in outside the usual roster. Employment records should identify each person's task, employer and position in the work area when the incident occurred.

Medical records after a employer-directed travel accident may identify road-crash spinal, limb, head or psychological injury and fall or handling injuries during required stops. Each diagnosis should be linked to the event or exposure and to the worker's actual functional change.

For a employer-directed travel accident, the first evidence to preserve includes written instruction, call log, message, roster and job allocation and route, timing, GPS, vehicle and destination records. It is most useful when dates, people, equipment, duties and later medical histories tell a consistent account.

• Police event, dashcam, witness and medical material.
• Details of any personal interruption or alternative route.

After a employer-directed travel accident, an insurer may dispute the employer says the instruction was optional or had ended and the route or stop is said to be personal. The written decision should be answered with evidence directed to those stated reasons.

Treatment should record the directed task and accident mechanism. Future restrictions may need to address travel frequency, distance and timing. If treatment is disputed after a employer-directed travel accident, the request should explain the accepted diagnosis, expected functional benefit and reasonable alternatives.

Work capacity after a employer-directed travel accident may turn on capacity for local work may not extend to long or after-hours travel and fatigue and medication can affect safe driving where medically documented. Proposed duties must be compared with the real task demands and the worker's ability to sustain them for the proposed hours.

WPI is assessed from stable, accepted medical impairment under the applicable NSW method; travel, collision, surgery or imaging does not create an automatic percentage. Each diagnosed body system must be assessed using its own clinical findings, and any pre-existing impairment issue must be addressed separately. Any WPI assessment after a employer-directed travel accident occurs after stabilisation under the NSW method for the accepted body system; the accident or surgery alone does not determine a percentage.

A NSW road crash may also require a separate CTP claim or advice, depending on the vehicle, road and circumstances. Another business controlling a client site, vehicle, venue or premises may raise a separate recovery issue that needs individual advice. These issues are separate from workers compensation and depend on the particular facts.

For a employer-directed travel accident, assistance may involve identify whether the facts concern work-duty travel, a section 10 journey, a section 11 recess or another course-of-employment question and preserve route, employer, vehicle, event and medical records before app or camera data is overwritten. The purpose is to identify the disputed decision and the evidence needed for the next step, not to promise an outcome.