Much of the recent research about truck drivers' fatigue has been considering the effectiveness of government and company regulations on driver fatigue and on the management of fatigue in general. The following study focuses on the comparison between drivers from a large private trucking company and military truck drivers in Israel. Each group belongs to a different working environment that has its own fatigue management policy (limited night driving vs. hours of service regulation), but both groups share the same driving environment (short haul driving, same roads and same climate). The major conclusion from this study is that a limited night driving policy is not necessarily effective in decreasing the rate of fatigue incidents and falling-asleep incidents among short haul drivers. One parameter proved to be important for the effectiveness of such policy is the length of the workday. Other parameters that we expected would have an impact on the rate of falling-asleep incidents such as required hours of sleep and the location of the night sleep turned out to be not significant. This study also enhances the major differences between novice/young drivers and expert drivers. Even though military career and civilian drivers have a different working environment than the private fleet drivers, they have more in common with them in terms of fatigue symptoms and fatigue related driving behaviour than with military mandatory service drivers. Novice/young drivers are subject to higher risk of falling asleep at the wheel even when their working conditions are relatively easier than of the expert drivers. For the covering abstract see ITRD E113725 (C 22328 CD-ROM).
Abstract