Not wearing a high visibility safety vest may have cost a worker his life when he was run over by a prime mover in Toll Transport's Wagga Wagga yard in NSW.

The truck driver was employed by Wayne Lewis Transport He was rolling up a tarpaulin on the roadway at the depot at 1am in the morning when he was struck by the truck. He was not wearing a safety vest and the area was poorly lit with only one light working.

Justice Kavanagh was told the employer had provided a high visibility safety vest and directed the worker to wear it. At the time, Toll required all truck drivers to wear high visibility clothing at the site, but did not enforce the instruction. Further, there was no traffic control system at the site, and no risk assessment on traffic management and heavy vehicles had been undertaken. The company had a formal induction process which, according to its Corporate Risk Manual, was to be conducted for all workers and visitors to the site.

However the worker was not formally inducted despite having attended the site on two prior occasions. "Had he been inducted he would have known it was the defendant's policy to require the use of safety vests on site." said Justice Kavanagh. "Lighting was poor and there were no defined pedestrian areas," she said.

A Toll manager told the court that the depot had since been improved with additional lights, parking signs, new no-parking areas and designated tarping areas.

Justice Kavanagh noted that the company "does not have a fine industrial record", with two previous breaches of the NSW OHS Act - three under the Victorian Act and one under Queensland legislation. She took into account Toll's early guilty plea, contrition and cooperation with WorkCover, and fined it $220,000.