Commercial Motor Vehicle Driver Fatigue, Long-Term Health, and Highway Safety Research Needs (2016) / Chapter Skim
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1 Introduction
1 Introduction
Pages 17-24
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From page 17... ...
A better understanding and mitigation of the risk posed by fatigue in commercial driving could be obtained through the acquisition of more relevant data and the use of more targeted quantitative methods. To help answer questions about the linkages among hours of service, fatigue, highway safety, and the long-term health of CMV drivers, FMCSA requested that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, through its Committee on National Statistics, convene the Panel on Research Methodologies and Statistical Approaches to Understanding Driver Fatigue Factors in Motor Carrier Safety and Driver Health; see Box 1-1 for the panel's detailed statement of task.
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From page 18... ...
Examples include on-board electronic recording systems and video data capture and vehicle telematics, often associated with naturalistic driving studies. In addition, to help analyze the more detailed and complex data derived from these new sources, new statistical and computer science methodologies have been developed.
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From page 19... ...
STUDY CONTEXT Fatigue and Performance in Safety-Sensitivity Occupations HOS regulations in regulated industries typically specify both the limits of time at work and minimum rest time in order to maintain safety and reduce risk resulting from fatigue. Fatigue generally refers to a subjective sense of weariness, but in work environments, it refers primarily to the objective decline in performance resulting from physical exertion and/or behavioral effort over time, as well as from inadequate time for recovery.
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From page 20... ...
have received much of the attention relative to fatigue mitigation through HOS regulations for CMV drivers. However, scientific studies in the past 25 years have established that driver fatigue and performance also are dynamically influenced by the regulation of sleep need and endogenous circadian rhythms, including the need to obtain sufficient sleep to ensure recovery from work schedules that might induce either acute or chronic sleep deprivation.
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From page 21... ...
A substantial body of evidence indicates that a chronic reduction in sleep time -- especially to 6 or fewer hours per day, which has been objectively documented among CMV drivers (Dinges et al., 2005b; Hanowski et al., 2007; Van Dongen and Mollicone, 2014) -- is associated with many long-term health problems, including obesity, hypertension, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, as well as performance deficits (Watson et al., 2015a, 2015b)
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From page 22... ...
. FMCSA, as the Federal agency responsible for motor carrier safety, must also be involved in the evaluation of the fatigue management programs used by carriers to determine whether they successfully mitigate fatigue." The NTSB concluded that if fatigue management programs are to be successful, FMCSA oversight is needed; therefore, the NTSB made the following recommendation to FMCSA: "Develop and use a methodology that will continually assess the effectiveness of the fatigue management plans implemented by motor carriers, including their ability to improve sleep and alertness, mitigate performance errors, and prevent incidents and accidents." DATA LIMITATIONS Upon reviewing the data available for developing an understanding of how driver fatigue relates to crash risk, the panel identified a number 1 Available: http://www.nafmp.com/en [March 2016]
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From page 23... ...
, different subsets of the populations of CMV drivers, and different types of jobs, it is not surprising that efforts to date to examine the causal association among driver behavior, hours driving, driver fatigue, and crash rates have resulted in a variety of somewhat disparate findings. Better quality data, including temporal synchronization across variables, and the use of advanced quantitative methods could provide an understanding of the multiple interacting factors that increase crash risk.
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From page 24... ...
This inconsistency represents another avenue of opportunity for identifying ways to improve CMV drivers' health and highway safety. ORGANIZATION OF THE REPORT Part I of this report provides background information on the problem of CMV driver fatigue and its relationship to drivers' long-term health and highway safety.
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