A Mount Macedon property developer who crashed his car into diners outside a Daylesford pub, killing five people, has given evidence at a coronial inquest claiming he did not hear 10 repeated alerts warning him of dangerously low blood sugar levels.
William Swale appeared before Melbourne Coroners Court on Tuesday, 10 March 2026, speaking publicly for the first time since the November 5, 2023 crash outside the Royal Daylesford Hotel. According to court records, his glucose monitoring device triggered 10 alarms indicating low levels, yet Swale told the court he heard none of them.
Swale's blood glucose readings showed a steady decline during the afternoon of the crash. He checked his device at 3:58pm and recorded 7.2mmol/L. By 5:17pm, about 50 minutes before the crash, the same device showed a reading of 2.9mmol/L (normal fasting levels are around 5-7mmol/L). Paramedics who treated him immediately after the crash found his blood glucose had plummeted to less than 1.1mmol/L, a potentially lethal level.
After leaving a clay shooting event in Clunes, Swale drove to Daylesford. Noticing his hunger and recognising the symptoms of dropping blood sugar, he attempted to get food at Winespeake Cellar and Deli but was told no tables were available. He told the inquest that at that point, "the world was dark as if it were 10pm", indicating he was in the midst of a severe hypoglycaemic episode.
Exiting the deli is the last thing he remembers before paramedics treated him at the crash scene. CCTV footage captured his white BMW X5 stopping in the middle of Camp Street, forcing cars to drive around it, before making a U-turn and beginning a downhill drive towards the pub's outdoor dining area.
Swale struck wooden picnic tables outside the hotel at 6:07pm, killing Vivek Bhatia, 38, his son Vihaan, 11, Pratibha Sharma, 44, Jatin Kumar, 30, and Anvi Sharma, 9 (who later died in hospital). Six others were injured.
The matter of the missed alerts
When questioned about the 10 alarms from his glucose monitoring system, Swale attributed his failure to hear them to "issues with my phone connecting to my car via Bluetooth". The device was connected to an app on his mobile phone, designed to alert users when blood glucose levels fall dangerously low.
The claim raises questions about whether Swale had understood how to use the technology he relied on, or whether the system itself failed him. Court records show he had carried the device for years and his endocrinologist had described him as an "excellent patient" in a statement tendered during his bail hearing in 2023.
Yet evidence presented during the inquest revealed significant gaps in Swale's diabetes management knowledge. He told the court he did not recall receiving formal driving-specific training since his initial diagnosis in 1994, despite three decades of driving with type-1 diabetes. He was unaware of the legal requirement to notify VicRoads about his condition until he applied for a truck driving licence about five years before the crash.
What Swale's testimony underscores is the gap between having a medical condition and managing it safely in circumstances where it matters most. He said he had carried jellybeans and other snacks in his car and had a personal rule that he could drive with blood glucose above 8mmol/L, dropping to 5mmol/L before eating. Yet when levels fell to 2.9mmol/L, he did not act decisively. The decision to go to a restaurant when he might have felt warning signs rather than immediately consuming the emergency snacks he carried remains unexplained in his testimony.
The collapse of the criminal case
All 14 charges against Swale, including five counts of culpable driving causing death, were struck out in September 2024 by Magistrate Guillaume Bailin, who found that from 5:36pm onwards, Swale was experiencing a "severe hypoglycaemic episode, the result of which his actions of driving were non-voluntary". The magistrate criticised the prosecution's case as weak and said the Crown had based its negligence argument on events starting too late in the day.
The decision troubled victim families who attended court daily. However, the magistrate's reasoning was clear: once Swale entered a state of severe hypoglycaemia, he could not be held criminally culpable for actions he could not control.
The coronial inquest, now underway, examines broader questions including the safety of outdoor dining located close to busy roads, the adequacy of diabetes management protocols for drivers, and what additional safeguards might prevent similar tragedies.
Swale told the court and the families present: "I think of them from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep, and they are always, always with me." He described the crash as "a catastrophe that should not have happened".