On Tuesday 29 January 2002 at about 1119, express freight Train 530 collided with a stationary shunting locomotive in New Plymouth when the locomotive engineer fell asleep briefly while berthing.
There were no injuries and the locomotives were only slightly damaged.
The following safety issues were identified:
• the restorative sleep habits of the locomotive engineer while working night shifts
• the inability of the locomotive vigilance system to overcome short-term attention deficits in time to prevent this type of accident.
In view of safety recommendations [018/01 and 019/01] made to the operator in Rail Occurrence Reports 00-115, 00-117 and 00-121 relating to previous occurrences involving similar attention loss through microsleeps, no further safety recommendations were made to the operator.
