Fatigue Risk Assessment

Circadian met with the Senior Management team of a mid-sized tank truck operation to discuss strategies for reducing human error and accident liability in its 24/7 trucking operations. Prior to this meeting, Circadian conducted a Fatigue Risk Assessment to identify the extent and location of fatigue risk within the operation.

In the ensuing discussion with the senior management team, it became clear that human error and fatigue was a probable leading cause of numerous accidents in the past, and was contributing to higher than average levels of fatigue risk in the current business. Circadian described a well established process for precisely identifying the root cause of the excess risk, and for establishing procedures and programs to mitigate it.

This initial analysis of driver logs showed a distribution of fatigue risk across the entire operation ranging from 5 (low risk) to 93.04 (very high risk) with a mean score of 49.04. While this “mean” fatigue score falls within an average risk category, the long tail of scores in the high risk end of the scale indicated that there was a significant group that faced high probability of fatigue related accidents. Further investigation found a strong correlation between the fatigue risk of individual drivers and the frequency and cost of accidents (i.e. those who regularly exhibited high fatigue risk levels from the Circadian Alertness Simulation analysis also had more accidents).

The Fatigue Risk Assessment positioned the company to direct its efforts at reducing the number of fatigue related accidents. This was achieved through a continuous schedule optimization process that reviewed driver dispatches on a monthly basis and provided feedback on how to improve dispatches for the future. It also included education, training, and support materials for the drivers, dispatchers and managers.