The check that came back clean
On 4 September 2026, Associate Coroner Jennifer Smith released findings into the death of Jason Chapman, a 51-year-old Canterbury logging truck driver whose truck veered off State Highway 7 south of Culverden on 13 November 2025. A postmortem found Chapman died of ischaemic heart disease, with a contribution from hypertension. He suffered a heart event at the wheel.
What makes this a compliance story rather than a tragic one-off is what his employer did, and what the system did not tell them. Chapman had been told by his cardiologist in September 2024, in person, that he could not resume driving commercial vehicles indefinitely. He returned to work in March 2025 without telling his employer and died eight months later.
The employer did the thing a diligent operator is meant to do. They checked the Transport Operator Register Online (TORO), which confirmed Chapman held a current Class 1-5 full licence with no conditions. They took him at his word that he was cleared. They did not seek independent confirmation from his specialists.
Why the register showed nothing
TORO reflects only what NZTA knows. Chapman’s medical restriction had never been formally applied to his licence, so the register showed a clean record. The doctor had told the patient. The doctor had not told the regulator.
That is not a loophole so much as a design feature. Under Section 18 of the Land Transport Act 1998, health practitioners must report to NZTA a person who is unfit to drive and likely to keep driving after being told not to. But there is no blanket requirement to report every medically unfit driver. The obligation hinges on the practitioner’s judgement that the patient will ignore the advice.
Coroner Smith recommended mandatory reporting apply whenever unfitness is likely to be prolonged or indefinite, and forwarded her findings to NZTA, police and the Medical Council of New Zealand. She also questioned why Chapman still held a full licence with forklift and wheels endorsements after being deemed unfit.
Two findings in two weeks
This is not a single strange case. On 25 August 2026, Coroner Woolley examined the deaths of Eileen and Peter Field in an Auckland crash. Peter Field had a driving medical where a doctor rated his fitness borderline and recommended review in a year. NZTA decided it was not appropriate to review the licence because the doctor had not listed specific conditions. Woolley recommended NZTA contact practitioners even when no conditions are listed.
Two coroners, two weeks apart, pointing at the same break in the chain between what a doctor knows and what a licence shows. NZTA’s medical fitness guide was updated in December 2024 in its first significant review in over a decade, but updated guidance does not close a gap that is structural, not informational.
Where the liability actually sits
For operators running drivers in trucking, forestry, logistics and heavy equipment, the practical lesson is blunt. A TORO check confirms a licence is current. It does not confirm the holder is medically fit. The employer in this case was not negligent in any crude sense, and that is precisely the point. They used the tool available and the tool did not have the information.
That is the kind of gap WorkSafe will probe. AutoSense chief executive Charles Dawson warned in March 2026 that “driving is the work activity most likely to result in serious harm, yet many businesses are not treating driving risk with the same rigour as other risks, such as cyber breaches or financial controls,” citing WorkSafe data that 82% of work-related fatalities in the transport and warehousing sector involve vehicles.
The forestry sector already knows accountability travels up the chain. In November 2025, Forest360 was charged with a health and safety offence after a separate fatal trucking incident on a private forestry road and, under an enforceable undertaking, committed to spend over $400,000 including amends to the driver’s widow and road improvements.
What to do before the policy catches up
If Smith’s mandatory reporting recommendation is adopted, TORO would eventually carry the information employers currently lack. But that is a policy process measured in years. Until then, the duty of care sits with the employer, not the register.
The question every fleet operator should answer now is what their process is for independently verifying medical fitness, particularly for a driver with a known health history or one returning from an extended absence. As Dawson put it, driving risk “requires clear expectations, active monitoring and meaningful reporting and not assumptions.” Chapman’s death is the cost of the assumption.
Sources
- Canterbury truck driver Jason Chapman was not medically cleared to drive when he crashed and died on SH7, Associate Coroner finds (2026-09-04)
- Coroner calls for mandatory reporting of drivers deemed unfit long term (2026-09-05)
- Coroner urges NZTA to contact doctors after deaths of Eileen and Peter Field in Auckland crash (2026-08-25)
- Fatigue behind the wheel likened to drink driving, AutoSense warns (2026-03-19)
- Medical aspects of fitness to drive – a guide for health practitioners (2024-12-01)
- Company charged after trucker’s death now researching high-tech forestry road safety (2025-11-06)
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