The Trucking Research Institute of the American Trucking Associations (ATA), the Private Fleet Management Institute of the National Private Truck Council (NPTC), Iowa State University, and Daecher & Associates collaborated on a research project to evaluate the role of carrier scheduling practices in truck and motor coach driver fatigue. Funding for and oversight of the study were provided by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA). The objective of this project was threefold:

  1. to develop a definition or typology of truck driving environments and determine the percentage, of over-the-road drivers that fall within each type of environment,

  2. to assess the operational scheduling requirements of truck and motor coach carriers that affect driver fatigue, and

  3. to identify truck and motor coach carrier scheduling and related safety practices that influence driver fatigue and driver safety performance.

The Commercial Motor Vehicle Driver Fatigue Model

The foundation of the project is the Commercial Motor Vehicle (CMV) Driver Fatigue Model that identifies the various scheduling-related factors that may influence driver fatigue, non scheduling factors that may also have an effect on driver fatigue, and measures of driver fatigue. The three key fatigue-influencing factors included in the model are:

  1. CMV Driving Environments -- Regularity of Time, Trip Control, and Quality of Rest

  2. Economic Pressures -- Scheduling Demands of Commerce, Carrier Economic Factors, and Driver Economic or Personal Factors

  3. Carrier Support for Driving Safety

Additionally, the model includes two measures of fatigue and one measure of general safety performance:

  1. Frequency of Close Calls Due to Fatigue

  2. Driver Perceptions of Fatigue as a Problem

  3. Crash Involvement

The model was developed after an extensive review of the literature, conducting focus group sessions with personnel from truck and motor coach firms, and company site visits. The literature review revealed that no one study had addressed the wide array of driver fatigue factors included in the CMV Driver Fatigue Model. Also, relatively few studies attempted to empirically determine the importance of the factors that influence CMV driver fatigue, and only a few studies focused on motor coach driver fatigue.

Research Design

The research design for the project included three separate but related studies and data collection efforts. Nine survey instruments were developed to collect the necessary data. The first study, the "truck stop study," addressed the first objective of the project -- the development of a driver environment typology for over-the-road truck drivers. A survey that focused on the driver environment was distributed to a random sample of 502 truck drivers at five geographically dispersed truck stops. The other two studies tested the CMV Driver Fatigue Model for the truck and motor coach industries, thus identifying the carrier scheduling and related practices that influence driver fatigue in each industry. Four survey instruments were developed to collect the necessary data from four different levels of the carrier organization for each industry (i.e., top management, safety director, dispatchers, and drivers).

Keywords:
dispatcher, significant factor, crash involvement, ground transportation, driver fatigue model, perception, close call, variation, US government, driver fatigue
Subjects:
Safety
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2004. American Society of Safety Engineers
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