Effective 13 September 2026

Fatigue Management Policy

18 — Fatigue Management Policy

Effective Date: 13 September 2026 Application: Drivers, and the public. Governing law: Western Australia. Defined terms: Capitalised terms not defined in this document have the meaning given in 00 — Definitions.

This Policy is incorporated by reference into clause 3(a) of the Acceptable Use Policy and forms part of the fatigue hazard control described in the Safety Management System. It publishes the fatigue limits OZ Ride actually enforces — not an advisory recommendation.

1. Our limits are enforced, not advisory

1.1 OZ Ride enforces a hard maximum of 12 hours online within any rolling 24-hour window, and a mandatory minimum of 6 hours offline once that 12-hour limit is reached, before you may go online again.

1.2 These are not guidelines we ask you to follow on trust. They are enforced automatically by our systems at two separate points:

(a) when you try to go online — if you have already been online for 12 hours within the preceding rolling 24-hour window, you are blocked from going online, and told when you will next be able to; and (b) when you try to accept a Trip — if you are already online and reach the 12-hour limit while online, you are blocked from accepting any further Trip, so the limit cannot be circumvented simply by staying logged in past the threshold. We also decline to offer you a Trip whose estimated duration would carry your online hours past the 12-hour limit before the Trip could reasonably be expected to finish.

1.3 If our systems fail to evaluate your status correctly, the safe default is to keep the block in place — a technical fault in this system results in you being unable to go online rather than being waved through without a check.

1.4 How the 24-hour window works. The 12-hour figure is calculated on a rolling 24-hour window, not a calendar day — it is the total time you have spent online in the 24 hours immediately before the moment being checked. Once you reach the limit, a mandatory 6-hour offline period applies from that point; if, once that 6 hours has elapsed, your rolling 24-hour online total is still at or above the limit, the block remains in place rather than lifting automatically on a fixed clock.

2. Where OZ Ride's limits sit relative to WA law

2.1 Western Australia's on-demand transport legislation does not itself prescribe a numeric driving-hour limit for on-demand drivers. Fatigue is instead addressed as a mandatory hazard in the Safety Management System every On-Demand Booking Service must maintain (regulation 14 of the Transport (Road Passenger Services) Regulations 2020 (WA)), and separately as an occupational work-health-and-safety matter under the Work Health and Safety (General) Regulations 2022 (WA) Part 4.10 and WorkSafe WA's associated Code of Practice for commercial vehicle drivers (which has applied to taxi driving since 1 July 2019).

2.2 What the WA numbers actually are. The numeric limits that do exist in Western Australia are in the Work Health and Safety (General) Regulations 2022 (WA), regulation 184E. For a driver they apply to, and so far as is reasonably practicable, those limits are:

  • breaks from driving totalling at least 20 minutes for every 5 hours of work time, including at least 10 consecutive minutes;
  • no more than 168 hours of work time in any 14-day period;
  • for a driver without a relief driver, at least 27 hours of non-work time in any 72-hour period, including at least three periods of at least 7 consecutive hours, with no more than 17 hours between them; and
  • at least two periods of 24 consecutive hours non-work time in any 14-day period — or, in the alternative the regulation allows, four such periods in any 28-day period where work time does not exceed 144 hours in each constituent 14-day period.

2.3 Who those limits reach, and why ours reach further. Regulation 184C only makes a person a "commercial vehicle driver" — and so only engages regulation 184E at all — once their work time is more than 60 hours a week, or is more than 10 hours in a 24-hour period more than once a week, or includes midnight to 5 am more than once a week. A driver below all three of those triggers is outside Part 4.10 entirely. The regulation 184E limits are also expressed as duties to be met "so far as is reasonably practicable", not as absolute caps.

There is no 12-hour daily cap and no 6-hour continuous rest requirement anywhere in Western Australian law for on-demand drivers. Ours are our own. Set side by side with regulation 184E, our limits are stronger on three dimensions, identical on one, and silent on two. All six are set out below, because a fatigue policy that only lists the flattering comparisons is not a fatigue policy.

Stronger:

(a) Longest continuous stretch. Regulation 184E(2)(a) tolerates up to 17 hours between rest periods for a driver without a relief driver. We stop you at 12 hours online. (b) Who is covered. Our limits apply to every Driver from their first hour. Regulation 184E reaches you only once you cross one of the regulation 184C triggers. (c) How they bind. Ours are enforced by the Platform — the Driver App stops offering you work. The regulation 184E duties are qualified by what is reasonably practicable.

The same, not stronger:

(d) 14-day total. Twelve hours per rolling 24 hours compounds to exactly 168 hours per 14 days — the regulation 184E(1)(b) figure exactly. We are equal here, not below it.

Silent — the regulation covers these and we do not:

(e) In-shift breaks. Regulation 184E(1)(a) requires breaks totalling at least 20 minutes for every 5 hours of work, including at least 10 consecutive minutes. We have no in-shift break rule at all. Our 12-hour cap permits 12 hours online without requiring a single break. Taking regular breaks is your responsibility under clause 3, and our limit does not discharge it for you. (f) Rest duration. Our mandatory offline block is 6 hours. A regulation 184E(2)(a) rest period is at least 7 consecutive hours. Our 6-hour block does not by itself satisfy that element — where regulation 184E applies to you, the longer rest is what you need, and our releasing you back online after 6 hours is not a statement that you have rested enough.

And one thing that is not a comparison at all. Regulation 184E caps work time across all of your work. We can only see, and only cap, time online on this Platform. If you drive for another platform or hold another job, our limits cannot see that work and cannot protect you from it — which is why clause 3(b) asks you not to drive when fatigued regardless of the 12-hour limit, and why the secondary-driving-work disclosure in clause 3(c), though optional to answer at any given moment, matters.

2.4 What this Policy does not do. Meeting a number does not discharge our duty. OZ Ride's primary duty of care under section 16 of the Transport (Road Passenger Services) Act 2018 (WA), and its duties under work health and safety law, are to eliminate or minimise the fatigue risk so far as is reasonably practicable — an ongoing obligation that this Policy contributes to but does not exhaust. Where a Driver is a "commercial vehicle driver" within regulation 184C, the record-keeping duty in regulation 184G (work-time records kept for at least 3 years) and the fatigue-management-plan duty in regulation 184F apply in addition to this Policy, and this Policy does not displace them.

3. Your responsibilities

You must:

(a) log your online hours honestly by using the Driver App as intended — do not attempt to circumvent the fatigue limit by using multiple accounts, multiple devices, or any other means; (b) not go online, or continue driving, if you are fatigued, regardless of whether the 12-hour limit has been reached — fatigue can occur well before 12 hours, depending on your own circumstances, and this Policy's hard limit is a backstop, not a certification that you are fit to drive up to that point; (c) disclose secondary employment that involves driving, at onboarding and when it changes, so OZ Ride and you both have an accurate picture of your total driving exposure. This question is optional to answer at any given moment — you can skip it and answer later — but we ask you to answer it honestly when you do; (d) get adequate rest during your mandatory 6-hour offline period; and (e) comply with the zero-alcohol and zero-drugs requirements in clause 3(b) of the Acceptable Use Policy and clause 7.2 of the Driver Service Agreement — fatigue management and substance-free driving are related but separate obligations, and both apply at all times.

4. Taxi lane — shift notification is a regulatory record, not just fatigue telemetry

4.1 If you drive an OD-RH (taxi) vehicle, regulation 135 of the Transport (Road Passenger Services) Regulations 2020 (WA) requires you to inform OZ Ride, with your correct identity, every time you begin or end a period of driving to provide passenger transport. The online/offline toggle you use in the Driver App is how you meet that obligation for taxi work — it is not merely internal fatigue telemetry, and treating it as informal instead of as the regulatory record it is would be a mistake.

4.2 The same toggle also feeds the fatigue-hours calculation in clause 1. One action, two purposes: a statutory shift record for taxi work, and the input to the online-hours limit for every Driver.

5. Why we publish this

Fatigue management is often handled as an internal, unpublished operating rule. We publish it because a hard, enforced limit is both a genuine safety control and something you and the public are entitled to know we actually do, not merely recommend.

6. Review

This Policy is reviewed at least annually, whenever the underlying enforcement mechanism changes, and whenever the Safety Management System identifies the fatigue hazard needs a different control.

End of Fatigue Management Policy.

This page is rendered from the single source of truth for this document — content/legal/ in the OZ Ride website repository — which is also the text served to the Driver App and Rider App. There is no second version. Material changes are notified at least 14 days in advance via in-app message and email per the relevant agreement.