The Impact of Sleep Loss in Commercial and Public Transportation

The Impact of Sleep Loss in Commercial and Public Transportation 

In 1990, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) completed a study of 182 fatal-to-the-driver truck accidents to investigate the probable cause of the accidents. While the study was designed under the assumption that most fatal heavy truck crashes may be related to alcohol and other drugs, it was found that the most frequently determined probable cause was fatigue (12). A 1993 analysis of the Fatal Accident Report System (FARS) also suggested that truck driver fatigue is a contributing factor in about 30% of heavy truck accidents. 

The NTSB then initiated a study of 113 single-vehicle heavy-truck accidents in which the driver survived. Information about the 96-hr period prior to the crash was collected from 107 drivers. The analysis concluded that 58% of the accidents were fatigue-related. Eighteen percent of the drivers admitted having fallen asleep while driving (13). These data were not based on anecdotal driver reports but on a multivariate analysis of a predefined set of factors, including 

As with other modes of transportation, evidence for fatigue-related accidents in aviation exists. In 1993, the NTSB concluded in its report regarding the loss of a Douglas DC-8 at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba that the impaired judge- 

The nature of marine pilot work is characterized by irregular work schedules where the entire 24-hr cycle is part of the schedule (44). Thus, roughly 50% of a marine pilot s workload falls into the night period. Rest periods are often far from home so that they need to be spent in hotels. Duty/rest periods are very variable and largely depend on the nature of the specific operation, the region in which those operations are carried out, and the company s system of assigning pilots to the task. 

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Commercial and public transportation heavily relies on human operators. There is growing evidence that sleep loss may play a large role in transportation accidents. A committee formed at the 1986 meeting of the Association of Professional Sleep Societies found that numerous performance failures leading to catastrophic events occur most often at times of day coincident with the temporal patterns of brain processes associated with sleep (3). In addition, an investigation in the Netherlands showed that the highest accident rate in public transit accidents occurred in bus drivers who began an early work shift (4). An assessment of the impact of sleep loss in commercial and public transportation is therefore needed. 

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