Campaign highlights dangers of fatigue

Commercial Motor
01/02/2003

by Steve Banner

Hauliers must wake up to the dangers associated with driver tiredness, say researchers at AWAKE, which specialises in helping firms combat employee fatigue. The consultancy claims that fatigue kills one truck driver every week.

Driver tiredness is thought to cause at least 10% of all road accidents and one in five accidents on motorways and trunk roads, says the University of Loughborough's Sleep Research Centre. It's a problem recognised by the Freight Transport Association, which recently launched a 'Driver Sleepiness Kills' campaign, in conjunction with AWAKE and the Association of Chief Police Officers.

The FTA has also run a joint exercise with Tayside Police during which officers stopped trucks on the A9 and A92. They gave the drivers FTA literature on how to avoid fatigue, and how to cope with it if it occurs.

So what can operators do to tackle the problem ? For a start, they should mount an internal awareness campaing to highlight the danger, say researchers from AWAKE. Shiftwork is a necessity in road transport, but can lead to employee drowsiness, so they should revise their shift patterns too, as research suggests. " The most dangerous pattern is the backward rotating one, where you're asking workers to switch from late, to afternoon, to morning shifts," argues the AWAKE research. "The forward rotating one, which works in the opposite direction, is less dangerous." The old idea that some individuals are morning people and others are night people isn't a myth, according to research. Some employees suffer more from daytime drowsiness than others, and firms should assess them to see who is most at risk. "We recently worked with a company with 60 drivers, and found that over 60% of the fault accidents its trucks were involved in were down to just six of them. It was because they were on shifts that didn't suit their natural rhythms."

Useful Contacts

AWAKE works closely with the Sleep Research Centre. AWAKE can be reached on (0)20 7462 7660.