Driver Fatigue is the Number One Safety Issue in the Truck and Bus Industry

Fatigue causes cognitive impairments that affect vigilance, attention, perception, and decision making – processes that are crucial to safe driving. These objective, measurable cognitive fatigue effects can occur without any marked degree of prior physical exertion, and the driver may not be aware of these impairments. Another serious fatigue threat to safe driving is drowsiness – the tendency to fall asleep at the wheel. This is also a condition that drivers tend to underestimate (or to be totally unaware of) while it is actually happening to them. Circadian rhythm interacts powerfully with fatigue and sleep debt, and has a major impact on human error.

Driver fatigue is also partly a subjective experience (that is, one that the driver is aware of), characterized by lack of motivation, feelings of exhaustion, boredom, discomfort, and a disinclination to continue driving. These effects of fatigue can impair driving safety by impairing sustained attention and safe decision making.

The causes of driver fatigue, fatigue-induced cognitive impairment, driver drowsiness, and the subjective experience of fatigue include:

In 1995 the U.S. Department of Transportation sponsored a National Truck and Bus Safety Summit. The goal was to bring together representatives of the many organizations involved in motor carrier safety to prioritize the safety issues facing the industry. Groups of experts represented drivers, enforcement, shippers and carriers, researchers, highway safety, professional associations, safety management systems, government organizations, and manufacturers/suppliers. This comprehensive assembly came to the consensus that driver fatigue was the number one safety issue of the motor carrier community. Driver fatigue remains the leading safety issue today.

The Commercial Motor Vehicle Driver Fatigue and Alertness Study

The importance of driver fatigue led the U.S. Department of Transportation and Transport Canada to commission the largest, most comprehensive over-the-road study of driver fatigue and alertness ever conducted. Dennis Wylie was the Principal Investigator, and he and his associates designed, executed, and documented a study involving 80 U.S. and Canadian tractor-trailer drivers in an operational setting of real-life, revenue-generating trips totaling more than 200,000 miles and 4,000 hours of driving. The scientists monitored the drivers and trucks continuously by electronic instrumentation. The study focused on several work-related factors, including:

The results of this driver fatigue and alertness study form an important part of the foundation for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's upcoming revisions of the hours-of-service rules for commercial drivers.

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Last modified: March 09, 2000