The case involved a driver employed by a fruit and vegetable transport company operating services in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and France. According to the court ruling, the driver had worked from 07.00 to 19.00 on 10 September 2025 and then continued loading freight until 23.00 for a trip to France. His employer then instructed him to leave again at 04.00 the following morning to avoid traffic.
The driver refused, arguing that after such a short rest period, he would pose a danger on the road. The company dismissed him on the spot and told him to hand in the keys to the truck.
The Zeeland-West-Brabant District Court found that the instruction was not reasonable. The court held that asking a driver to get back behind the wheel at 04.00 after working until 23.00 was contrary to minimum rest-time rules. The employer did not appear in court and did not submit a defence, meaning the court proceeded on the basis of the driver’s account.
The ruling is an interim decision and the procedure is continuing. The court has ordered the company to provide payslips, working-time records, and tachograph data, which the driver intends to use in further claims relating to overtime, unpaid wages, transition compensation, and possible fair compensation.
A single dismissal case, but a wider safety issue
Although the judgment concerns one employment dispute, it raises a broader question in road transport: what happens when commercial pressure, delivery schedules and fatigue collide?
EU rules set limits on driving time and minimum rest periods for precisely this reason. Regulation (EC) No 561/2006 provides common rules on maximum daily and fortnightly driving times, as well as daily and weekly minimum rest periods. Separate working-time rules for mobile road transport workers limit weekly working time to an average of 48 hours, although this can be extended to 60 hours in a single week if the 48-hour average is maintained over the reference period.
In practice, however, the risk is not only how many hours are recorded as driving. Loading, waiting, administration, delays, cleaning, vehicle checks and other duties can also leave a driver tired before the truck has even moved. That distinction is central to cases like this: a driver may still be within a technical driving-time limit, but not be fit to drive safely after a long working day.
Fatigue is also difficult to police at the roadside. Unlike alcohol, tiredness cannot be measured with a simple breath test. Tachograph data can show driving and rest patterns, but it cannot fully capture whether a driver has actually slept, whether a rest period was restorative, or whether earlier non-driving work has left the driver too exhausted to continue.
Fatigue remains a persistent problem in European road transport
Research cited by the European Transport Safety Council has previously highlighted the scale of fatigue among professional drivers. In 2021, ETSC reported findings from a European Transport Workers’ Federation study in which one third of lorry drivers surveyed said they had fallen asleep at the wheel.
The same discussion has long pointed to working conditions, pay structures, time pressure and insufficient rest as factors behind fatigue in commercial road transport. For drivers, refusing an unsafe trip can carry a real personal cost, especially where employment is insecure or where workplace culture discourages saying no.
That is why documentation is important. In the Dutch case, the court ordered the employer to provide working-time records and tachograph data. Such records can show whether the dispute is an isolated disagreement or part of a wider pattern of scheduling and payment practices.
The legal risk for operators
The case also shows the risk of using summary dismissal in disputes over safety-related refusals. Summary dismissal is one of the most severe sanctions available to an employer. It normally requires an urgent reason serious enough to justify immediate termination. Where a driver refuses a task because they believe it would breach rest-time rules or create a road safety danger, the employer may struggle to show that the refusal amounts to serious misconduct.
The fact that this case is still ongoing means further financial claims may yet be determined. However, the court’s interim decision already sends a clear signal: an instruction that undermines minimum rest requirements cannot simply be enforced by threatening the driver’s job.
