End of term got you tired and stessed? Dying for a break?

This is not meant as a joke. You can die from overwork, even in the modern workplace, and it has recently emerged that one of Toyota’s senior car engineers died from working too many hours.

The BBC have a report in which they say that a 45-year-old man was developing a hybrid version of Toyota’s successful Camry line at the time of his death. According to his wife’s lawyers, in the two months leading up to his death he averaged more than 80 hours of overtime per month.

The ruling will allow his family to collect benefits from his work insurance, his wife’s lawyers said. The worker, whose name was not given, regularly worked nights and weekends and was frequently sent abroad.

Workers in Japan often put in very long hours and “sudden death from overwork” is referred to as karoshi. Workplace stress is common all over the world, but it is a huge problem in Japan, where karoshi was first recognised as a phenomenon in 1987. Only last year, a court in central Japan ordered compensation to be paid to the wife of another 30-year-old Toyota employee who collapsed at work and died.

You can read more about stress at an earlier blog workplace danger.