NTSB MWL Webinar: Managing Commercial Motor Vehicle Driver Fatigue Risks October 27,2020

The NTSB has issued more than 200 safety recommendations to address the problem of fatigue in transportation and it is a focus area on our 2019-2020 Most Wanted List. In this webinar speakers highlight the findings of NTSB fatigue-related highway crash investigations and discuss how companies can implement a Fatigue Risk Management Program and share industry experiences with implementing these programs. This webinar features opening remarks by NTSB Vice Chairman Bruce Landsberg, and presentations by NTSB Senior Highway Crash Investigator Mike Fox, NTSB Human Performance Investigator Jana Price, PhD, Harry Crabtree, Paladin Capital, Inc., Al Smith, Greyhound Lines and Bill Hambrick, Werner Enterprises.

[jonathankleinow]

I'm glad I was able to attend the livestream yesterday. I think it was Bill Hambrick who said that a lot of the drivers who have issues with fatigue are the same drivers who don't plan out their route, which I thought was interesting. I'm not a commercial trucker, but when I take the family on roadtrips, I always plan to reach my destination by a certain time and even plan out fuel stops ahead of time (hey, I trust Costco gas, and it's usually the cheapest). I thought it would be a given in trucking to plan out your route and all fuel/meal breaks before departure, given the need to deliver the load within a certain timeframe.

The "penny-wise, pound-foolish" attitude that some truckers and trucking companies seem to have appeared in stark relief in a different fatigue crash not mentioned here: The multivehicle work zone crash on I-84 in Boise, Idaho, on June 16, 2018. The driver likely fell asleep and rear-ended a line of stopped cars in a work zone at 62 MPH. When the company ordered the 2019 Volvo VNL6, which comes standard with a collision mitigation system, they asked for it to be deleted in order to save approximately $2, 500 on the cost of the truck. I wonder if, after the crash, the owners wished they had spent the $2, 500 on safety equipment that could have either prevented the crash or mitigated the severity of it, instead of spending hundreds of thousands or millions on settling lawsuits brought by the families of the three airmen killed in the crash.

[bigd--channel]

As one who used to drive. I think the mandatory off duty/sleeper mandates you now have are a joke. i am not a machine, and to park and sleep at at time dictated by some rule simply would never work for me. I used to drive till I felt tired. You think you are making it safer, but you are not.