FATIGUE AND DRIVING

The accumulation of recent evidence on accident rates in relation to exposure to risk makes it possible to re-evaluate the contribution of fatigue to road safety, particularly in relation to the working hours of professional drivers. While there is little evidence that the actual task of driving itself is a major contributor to fatigue, a range of temporal and other variables have shown strong associations with accident rates, including hours of work, time of day, type of shift, together with age of driver and type of transport operation. There is some evidence for cumulative effects over several days. However, fatigue should not be thought of as a simple function of these variables, because there are various ways and strategies of coping with fatigue over the short term, and over the longer term, processes of adaptation and selection are also important.

• Corporate Authors:

  Brain Information Service

  California University, Center for Health Science
  Los Angeles, CA  United States  90024
• Authors:
  • McDonald, N
• Publication Date: 1989-7

Media Info

• Features: References;
• Pagination: p. 185-192
• Serial:
  • ALCOHOL, DRUGS AND DRIVING
  • Volume: 5
  • Issue Number: 3

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Age; Crash rates; Drivers; Fatigue (Physiological condition); Hours of labor; Professional drivers
• Uncontrolled Terms: Driver age
• Subject Areas: Highways; Planning and Forecasting; Safety and Human Factors; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00492156
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: HS-040 729
• Files: HSL, TRIS, ATRI
• Created Date: Mar 31 1991 12:00AM