Preventing Fatigue-Related Crashes At Work

“Fatigue-related crashes are fully preventable when we understand the effects and impacts of fatigue on the safety of our fleet drivers and take actions to mitigate this driver risk.”

It is often difficult to determine whether a driver was drowsy at the time of a crash, so hard numbers can be elusive, but globally, driver fatigue is considered a major contributing factor to motor vehicle crashes, injuries and deaths. In the United States, traffic crashes are the leading cause of death in the workplace and work-related crashes result in a significant number of injuries, workers’ compensation claims, lost productivity, and vehicle property damage.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that fatigue in this country was the probable cause or a factor in 40% of their recent highway crash investigations, a greater proportion than for any other mode of transportation, including rail, air, and maritime.

Those are the highlights of a recently released guide from the Network of Employers for Traffic Safety (NETS), a nonprofit public-private partnership that offers tips and information on preventing fatigue-related crashes.



Managing Fatigue for the Fleet Safety Professional was developed as a toolkit to help workplace professionals understand how fatigue impacts the safety of workers who drive as part of their job, and to reduce the risk of crashes and injuries resulting from fatigued driving.

“The guide encourages organizations to look at the gaps within their own organizational cultures related to fatigued driving in the spirit of a ”just” or non-blaming culture where employer and employees have mutual responsibilities to each other in the prevention of fatigued driving,” Gabriel T. Kardos, NETS chairman of the board and Johnson & Johnson’s global director road safety, said in the guide’s introduction.

An estimated 1 in 25 adult drivers reported having fallen asleep while driving in the 30 days before responding to a survey, and many more admitted to driving when they were sleep-deprived, according to the National Safety Council, quoting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention research.

The effects of fatigue are similar to impairment from drugs or alcohol. For example, the cognitive impairment from being awake for 20 to 24 consecutive hours is equivalent to the impairment of someone with a blood alcohol content of .08 to .10, the safety group noted.

NETS members with fatigue risk management practices have lower crash rates, it said, and ”the prevention of fatigue-related crashes will spare pain and suffering for employees, work teams, and their families, and save time and money for the employer.”

Managing Fatigue for the Fleet Safety Professional, which is free, includes a series of fact sheets, social media messaging templates, and other resources, ranging from topics like how to identify the signs and symptoms of fatigue and how to prevent it, to guidelines detailing the implementation and oversight of a driver fatigue management program.

To access the guide, click here. To learn more about the Network of Employers for Traffic Safety (NETS), click here.