Mixed work and personal travel accident: NSW workers compensation guide

Mixed work and personal travel accident can occur through collision during a minor stop on an otherwise work route and incident during a substantial personal detour. 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 mobile workers combining a job with a personal errand and workers extending business travel for private reasons. Employment records should identify each person's task, employer and position in the work area when the incident occurred.

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

For a mixed work and personal travel accident, the first evidence to preserve includes original work instruction, itinerary and expected route and actual GPS route, timing, stops, purchases and communications. It is most useful when dates, people, equipment, duties and later medical histories tell a consistent account.

• When the personal purpose began and ended.
• Police, dashcam, witness, vehicle and medical records.

After a mixed work and personal travel accident, an insurer may dispute the parties apply the section 10 interruption or deviation rule without establishing that the trip was a listed section 10 journey and the personal purpose had become the operative purpose of the trip when the incident occurred. The written decision should be answered with evidence directed to those stated reasons.

Medical causation is separate from the legal connection of the journey. CTP may still require consideration after a road crash even if workers compensation is disputed. If treatment is disputed after a mixed work and personal travel accident, the request should explain the accepted diagnosis, expected functional benefit and reasonable alternatives.

Work capacity after a mixed work and personal travel accident may turn on weekly-payment entitlement depends on the accepted injury and incapacity and future travel restrictions should address the actual job rather than the disputed route alone. 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 mixed work and personal 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 mixed work and personal 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.