Commercial Motor Vehicle Driver Fatigue, Long-Term Health, and Highway Safety Research Needs (2016) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
10 Research Directions for Fatigue and Highway Safety
10 Research Directions for Fatigue and Highway Safety
Pages 173-202
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From page 173... ...
With such a database, research would be able to identify which factors play more or less important roles in causing driver fatigue, and which factors, including fatigue, play more or less important roles in the frequency of crashes. Along with other considerations, such as the feasibility of implementing policy changes that can alter various causal factors, such research should greatly assist the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA)
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From page 174... ...
The table includes driver fatigue as both a predictor and an outcome because it is necessary to understand not only the extent to which driver fatigue causes crashes but also, assuming that fatigue is an important causal factor for crashes, what factors cause drivers to be fatigued. The table also includes traffic density and whether driving occurs during the nighttime as important factors in crash risk.
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From page 175... ...
FMCSA would need to determine whether private sources exist, and if so, whether various techniques could be effective for making such sources public while avoiding disclosure of individual data. Further, FMCSA would need to determine the level of aggregation at which the data exist and whether they are sufficiently detailed, as well as whether the data exist for a subset or for the entire population of CMV drivers.
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From page 176... ...
• Fatal crash • Medications used rate • Fatigue (hours driving, hours • Safety-critical on the job) event rate • Recent sleep history • Fatigue • Circadian effects • Driving experience • Safety record (number of lane deviations, unusual speed changes, unusual brake applications)
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From page 177... ...
Driving • Weather • Police accident Environment • Degree of precipitation reports • Time of day • Accident • Traffic density reconstruction • Road type reports • Degree of road lighting • Hazards • Safety features • Availability of rest stops • Impact of other drivers • Amount of sunlight Carrier • Operation type • Fleet size • Scheduling • Logistics • Driver turnover rate • Fatigue management program • Safety culture • Safety record • Compensation (general method, level of compensation, and compensation by various tasks)
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From page 178... ...
The remainder of this chapter presents the panel's analysis and recommendations with respect to the most important directions for future research on fatigue among CMV drivers and highway safety. It describes in turn (1)
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From page 179... ...
Such data collection often is dependent upon CMV drivers who volunteer this kind of personal information. It is therefore common for various subsets of the truck and bus driver population to be under represented in such research efforts.
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From page 180... ...
Commercial Motor Vehicle Driver Surveys Surveys of the population of CMV drivers have been attempted. Recently, the National Institute on Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
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From page 181... ...
This survey provided information relevant to the present study, including whether a vehicle had been involved in a crash, the vehicle type, the jurisdiction, the type and size of the carrier, the distance traveled, and the range of operation. Unfortunately, this Census Bureau survey was discontinued after 2002.4 The Need for a Continuing Survey of Truck and Bus Drivers The panel contends there is a need for information on CMV drivers, their vehicles, their routes, and their employers.
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From page 182... ...
RECOMMENDATION 1: The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health should be enlisted to design and conduct a regu larly scheduled survey every 5 to 10 years to gather information needed to better understand the demographics and employment circumstances of all commercial motor vehicle drivers in various industry segments. DATA AVAILABLE FROM VEHICLES As detailed in Chapter 9, a number of new devices currently are being used or have been proposed for use with commercial motor vehicles.
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From page 183... ...
It has been suggested that electronic logging devices (similar to electronic on-board recorders) provide higher-quality documentation of the number of hours a truck or bus was in operation relative to the paper logs currently used by many CMV drivers because they are more difficult to tamper with, and they document hours automatically instead of requiring the driver to do so (see also Chapter 5)
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From page 184... ...
To address the fact that those carriers with electronic logging devices may not provide representative subsets of the population of CMV drivers, this comparison could use an interrupted time series design, as described in Chapter 6. Further, the importance of switching from paper logs could be demonstrated by research showing lower crash rates for carriers that have installed these devices compared with those that have not, controlling for confounding factors with a technique such as propensity scoring.
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From page 185... ...
. While the data such devices collect depends on the specific system and are proprietary, it is reasonable to believe that they are similar to those collected by electronic logging devices and telematics systems, and as such are likely relevant to research assessing the increased crash risk associated with fatigued driving.
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From page 186... ...
Vehicle Inspection Reports While no technology is involved, a safety inspection system inspects 4 million commercial motor vehicles each year in North America to ensure that trucks and buses are operating safely. These inspection data are a component of the Motor Carrier Management Information System (MCMIS)
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From page 187... ...
Data from Large Carriers Most carriers collect information on their truck drivers for such purposes as compensation, management, supervision, and monitoring. Many large carriers collect additional information on various aspects of drivers' health, their crash rates, their schedules, their routes, and their vehicles.
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From page 188... ...
All of this information will exist for some subsets of the population of CMV drivers. In addition, considerable information collected on trucks and buses will provide data on crash-free driving, or exposure data.
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From page 189... ...
In the short term, this appears to be one of the very limited possible means of acquiring this type of information that is collected by certain large carriers, as well as by ATRI. RECOMMENDATION 5: The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Admin istration should incentivize those that capture driver performance data (e.g., large fleets, independent trucking associations, compa nies that collect telematics data, insurance companies, researchers)
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From page 190... ...
and its relationship to other factors associated with driver fatigue and highway safety. Both exposure per hour of day -- needed to compute crash rates and risk by time of day -- and trip lengths and driving hours -- as predictors of driver fatigue and crash risk -- need to be investigated.
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From page 191... ...
These methods can allow for the intrusion of confounding factors that are simultaneous with the intervention of interest. More generally, it is common for research on issues concerning highway safety and fatigue to be based on observational studies, which are prone to confounding influences related both to the indicator of receiving or having the "treatment" of interest and to the outcome under study (see Chapter 6)
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From page 192... ...
The main sources at present are crash data sets; naturalistic driving studies; simulator studies; and vehicle instrumentation, including electronic logging devices. In considering which kind of data collection to undertake to answer a specific research question, one needs to acknowledge tradeoffs in terms of control versus real-world relevance.
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From page 193... ...
Several issues could be addressed to increase the utility of naturalistic driving studies. First, as with many observational studies, naturalistic driving data are collected only from volunteers, so their findings may not be generalizable to the entire population of truck and bus drivers.
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From page 194... ...
. The SCEs used as surrogates for crashes in naturalistic driving studies are in theory events that in slightly different circumstances would have resulted in a crash.
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From page 195... ...
However, this is the same as examining crashes to assess the impact on crash risk of behaviors that preceded the crashes when one does not know how common those behaviors were during driving time when no crash or SCE occurred. It would be extremely helpful if software were developed that could alert the analyst to behaviors or situations that were good at discriminating between times of safe and unsafe driving.
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From page 196... ...
Therefore, it is difficult to determine what driver behaviors unanticipated by the researcher might be linked to increased crash risk. This is an important area for future research as cameras and pattern recognition techniques improve.
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From page 197... ...
Similarly, trends in, for example, crash rates for specific entities could be used for comparative interrupted time series designs comparing states or companies with and without policy changes. In observational studies that compare a "treated" and an "untreated" group, one always needs to be careful about confounding due to differences between the two groups on baseline characteristics that are also associated with outcomes.
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From page 198... ...
Assessment of New Technologies for Reducing Fatigued Driving A previous section described how electronic data recorders, driver monitoring technology, and fatigue detection technology can be used to provide relevant data for research on crash risk. Obviously, these technologies, if successful, could also accomplish their intended purpose, which is to reduce the frequency of drowsy driving and enhance driver and vehicle safety.
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From page 199... ...
RECOMMENDATION 8: Using a human-systems integration framework, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in consulta tion with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, should develop evaluation guide lines and protocols for third-party testing, including field testing, conducted to evaluate new technologies that purport to reduce the impact of fatigue on driver safety. STATISTICAL ISSUES Complex Correlation Structures Researchers often employ standard statistical models on crash data.
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From page 200... ...
Power of Studies Studies of truck and bus drivers often must make use of relatively small sample sizes, and the panel was asked to comment on the assessment of power for such studies. Before doing so, it is valuable to emphasize that the framework proposed in this chapter emphasizes attempts to estimate the magnitude of the effect of different factors on crash risk or other safety outcomes.
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From page 201... ...
. Finally, in the case of observational studies, there is likely a bias due to the lack of balance of various confounding factors.
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From page 202... ...
. CONCLUDING REMARKS As the panel has argued, research in the area of the association between CMV driver fatigue and crash risk, while often praiseworthy, has not always been reflective of current statistical methods with respect to both study design and analysis.
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