EVERY CONTROL MATTERS

Within ten days, two mine workers went to work in different states and didn’t come home.

On July 24, the passenger of a light vehicle was killed and the driver injured following a collision with a haul truck at Peak Downs Mine in Queensland. Then, on August 3, another mine worker lost their life after being struck by a truck at United Wambo Open Cut in the NSW Hunter Valley.

Investigations into both incidents are ongoing and it would be wrong to draw conclusions about what caused either tragedy. But they are devastating reminders of a risk the mining industry has been trying to address for years: what happens when people, light vehicles and heavy mobile equipment cross paths.

The size of mining equipment leaves little room for error. Previous incidents show how easily a light vehicle can disappear into a blind spot, a radio call can be misunderstood or someone can simply become distracted. Even an intersection travelled through hundreds of times without incident can be the place where something goes wrong, and history shows just how often it nearly does.

In 2022, the NSW Resources Regulator reported that between 2017 and 2021 there had been two fatalities, 21 injuries and 840 reportable incidents involving vehicle interactions across NSW mines. By October 2024, the Regulator was again sounding the alarm after receiving 46 vehicle interaction notifications in just six months, 45 per cent of them from surface coal mines.

When those 46 incidents were reviewed, the predominant causes included inadequate communication and a lack of situational awareness. There were also cases where procedures weren’t followed and equipment malfunctioned.

The warnings have continued. In May 2025, a front-end loader was travelling up a ramp towards an intersection at a NSW open cut coal mine when its operator failed to identify a light vehicle with two people inside waiting ahead. The light vehicle operator had to take evasive action to avoid being crushed.

In May this year in Queensland, a dozer backing down a coal stockpile collided with a ute. The ute driver had established positive communication with the dozer operator before entering the area, but the 50/30 rule wasn’t enacted. The dozer operator didn’t see the ute parked near a light tower and pushed it two to three metres before stopping. Nobody was injured, but Resources Safety and Health Queensland (RSHQ) described the risk of fatality as significant.

Then in NSW in June, a haul truck came close to colliding with a grader. The Regulator found the truck operator failed to reduce speed on approach and maintain the required safe passing distance, noting the operator may have been distracted.

While the circumstances and equipment involved in these incidents differ, the same question remains: why do vehicle interactions keep happening?

There is an important lesson in the Queensland dozer and ute incident because positive communication had initially been established before the ute entered the area, yet the vehicles still collided.

Communication matters, but it can’t carry the entire weight of keeping people safe. It has to work alongside separation distances, designated parking areas, exclusion zones, traffic rules, visibility controls and technology.

The Regulator’s approach also recognises the importance of multiple layers of defence. In July 2025 it released a technical reference guide specifically aimed at reducing adverse vehicle interactions at surface mines, recognising that the risk needs multiple controls rather than reliance on any one defence.

In March this year, the Regulator went another step and introduced additional reporting requirements whenever a reportable vehicle interaction occurs. The information is intended to help identify where controls are failing and provide clearer lessons back to industry.

But systems and technology only work when they’re effective where the interaction is actually happening. Communication, separation distances, exclusion zones, traffic rules, visibility controls and technology all provide layers of protection, and safety should never depend on any single defence working perfectly every time.

Perhaps one of the hardest risks to control is familiarity. In its alert on the Queensland dozer and ute collision, RSHQ noted that workers had routinely used an undocumented location for driver swaps and that over time the practice had become normalised. Mining crews operate around heavy equipment every day. They travel the same roads, use the same intersections and work alongside the same machines. Most interactions happen exactly as expected.

That experience is valuable, but it can also make an extraordinary environment feel ordinary. No matter how familiar it becomes, a haul truck is still enormous, its blind spots still exist and the required separation distance doesn’t change just because you know the operator or you’re only entering the area for a minute.

The Regulator has been trying to drive that message home for years. In 2021, more than 13,000 NSW mine workers were reached through a vehicle interaction awareness campaign. Another campaign followed in 2022. In 2023, inspectors spoke directly with more than 9,500 workers and supervisors about mine road safety. By 2024, the Regulator was again reporting an increasing trend in vehicle interactions.

The industry isn’t short of awareness, procedures, training or increasingly sophisticated technology. What it cannot afford is for familiarity with the risk to become acceptance of it.

The investigations into Peak Downs and United Wambo will take time as authorities work to establish what happened and what lessons can be learnt. Until those investigations are complete, those involved and their families deserve that process to occur without speculation.

But the rest of the industry doesn’t need to wait to act on lessons already learnt from hundreds of previous incidents and near misses.

Behind every light vehicle is someone with people waiting for them at home, and behind every control is a lesson that somewhere may have been learnt the hardest possible way. The recent deaths are a painful reminder of why those lessons matter every single time people and heavy equipment cross paths.