U.S./CANADA STUDY OF COMMERCIAL MOTOR VEHICLE DRIVER FATIGUE AND ALERTNESS

摘要

The Commercial Motor Vehicle (CMV) Driver Fatigue and Alertness Study was the largest and mostcomprehensive over-the-road study of its kind ever conducted in North America. Its primary purposes wereto establish measurable relationships between CMV driver activities and physiological and psychologicalindicators of fatigue and reduced alertness and to provide a scientifically valid basis to determine thepotential for revisiting the 60-year-old hours-of-service regulations.A number of work-related factors thought to influence the development of fatigue, loss of alertness anddegraded performance in CMV drivers was studied within an operational setting of real-life, revenuegeneratingtrips. These included: the amount of time spent driving during a work period; the number ofconsecutive days of driving; the time of day when driving took place; and schedule regularity.It was found that the strongest and most consistent factor influencing driver fatigue and alertness was timeof-day; drowsiness, as observed in video recordings of the driver’s face, was markedly greater during nightdriving than during daytime driving. The number of hours of driving (time-on-task) was not a strong orconsistent predictor of observed fatigue.Other study findings noted that the number of driving periods was not a strong or consistent fatiguepredictor; that there was a low correlation between drivers’ subjective self-ratings of alertness/sleepinessand concurrent objective performance measures; and that there was a large difference between the amountof sleep drivers reported as their “ideal” and the amount they obtained during principal sleep periods in thestudy setting.While there is no single solution to the fatigue problem, much can be done to address driver fatiguethrough a combination of innovative hours-of-service regulation and enforcement, education, driver workscheduling, innovative fatigue management programs, driver screening, fitness for duty and alertnessmonitoring systems, and additional research.