Off the road: Numurkah trucker Doug Ingle had his licence suspended in December on medical grounds, following an incident in July for which he’d received the all-clear.
Photo by
Max Stainkamph
Doug Ingle is fighting to get his licence back, months after being cleared to drive.
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The trucker of 30 years spent time off the road in 2021 following a health scare, but he has been cleared to drive by a team of doctors and specialists — neurologists and cardiologists and other ‘ologists with fancy medical degrees’.
On December 13, 2021, with the truck ready to roll out to Brisbane the next day, Mr Ingle opened a letter from VicRoads telling him his licence would be suspended for medical reasons from December 27.
“Next morning, I rang VicRoads and told them,” Mr Ingle said.
“I’m taking a 60-tonne vehicle heading directly to Brisbane — if you’ve got a problem with that then come get me.
“They said ‘we’ve got no problem with that. You’re fully licensed.”
So, Mr Ingle hit the road the next morning, driving up the Newell Hwy for the umpteenth time, trying to get two trips to Brisbane and back before he was deemed unfit to drive just two weeks later.
The medical incident
Where it happened: Doug Ingle at the table where he passed out in July 2021.
Mr Ingle has spent a lot of time in his living room since July.
His coffee table is covered in more medical reports than you could poke a stick at.
Most are in medical jargon, but all reach roughly the same conclusion: Mr Ingle is fit to drive.
He sits sifting through medical reports just metres from where he passed out in the kitchen.
Mr Ingle was ordered by his doctor not to drive after he collapsed in June last year, passing out at his kitchen table, several days after his second AstraZeneca jab.
He said he was simply sitting at the kitchen table on the phone when he slumped backwards, head against the wall, when his housemate rushed over to see if he was okay.
He woke up groggy, then went to bed, and the next day he took himself to hospital in Shepparton.
The region was sliding in and out of lockdowns in the depths of winter and nurses were immediately concerned when he arrived — a trucker from interstate, he might have COVID-19.
He joked he was tested about five times in the 24 hours he was at Goulburn Valley Health and understood why staff members were on edge, but Mr Ingle came up clear on tests.
He was held overnight but nothing else happened — he looked fine.
Confused and concerned, he was told not to drive until further tests were done, so Mr Ingle got lifts to and from specialists in Melbourne and across the Goulburn Valley, and hooked himself up to a heart machine for a week.
In September, he was cleared by the hospital. He wasn’t put on medication and wasn’t given an MRI or “anything” of a serious nature.
“They just referred me to my GP,” he said.
“My GP was a bit unsure, so referred me to some neurologists and I had a heart and head monitor and video feed through the house.
“I wasn’t the fittest person in the world — I mean I’d been driving trucks for 30 years — but I was still in good health.”
Unable to drive a truck, he hadn’t found a new job while waiting for the all-clear, which he’d always hoped was only a few days away.
He lost six months of work and needed to borrow nearly $25,000 from a friend in order to stay afloat.
However, he finally got the medical all-clear in late November and got a new job with a trucking company in the Goulburn Valley.
Less than a fortnight later, he received the letter telling him his licence would be cancelled on medical grounds just after Christmas, nearly five months since the incident.
It was the first he’d heard from VicRoads.
A bureaucratic nightmare
Behind the wheel: Doug Ingle behind the wheel of his car. He wants to be able to climb behind the wheel of a big rig.
Photo by
Max Stainkamph
The coffee table full of medical reports were all sent to VicRoads but Mr Ingle met with a brick wall and his frustrations continued to rise through the start of 2022.
“The people at VicRoads are really nice, they’ve said ‘let’s see what the problem is’, even when I’ve gone off at them,” he said.
“They say ‘we'll have a look. We'll fix it. We can talk’, and every single time they bring the file up, put me on hold, have read through it, and then come back and say ‘I really don’t know what to tell you’.”
Mr Ingle has been to the Ombudsman, who couldn’t help.
Lawyers told him he couldn’t prove he was medically safe to drive in court.
He just had to keep resubmitting the same reports over and over.
A VicRoads spokesperson said the department wasn’t able to comment on individual cases, but said there was a “robust and balanced medical review process” which kept Victorians safe on the road.
‘’We will only suspend or cancel a driver’s licence if someone is assessed as medically unfit to drive, fails a driving assessment, does not provide a medical report upon request or refuses or fails to undergo a test,’’ they said.
Health professionals, police, family and friends could all raise concerns about a person’s fitness to drive and VicRoads would investigate.
Under the Road Safety Act, VicRoads is responsible for ensuring that all drivers are fit to drive and is legally obliged to investigate any drivers reported by police, health professionals or members of the public.
Mr Ingle said he had provided every report requested by VicRoads.
He has got a labouring job in the meantime, finally sick enough of waiting and so in debt to friends and family that he needs the income, no matter how it comes.
It’s not easy on his 60-year-old body, limiting what other jobs he could pick up.
So, until then, he’s trapped in limbo, waiting to get his licence back.
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