Fatigued driving
While the contribution of fatigue to road trauma is difficult to assess, it is estimated that fatigue is a factor in 20 per cent of driver deaths on Victoria’s roads each year.
The risk of being involved in a fatigue related crash is at least three times higher between 2 am and 4 am, compared to the safest time of midday to 2 pm.
Several issues are critical to reducing the impact of fatigued driving:
Fatigued driving in rural areas: Fatigue related crashes are significantly more prevalent on country roads compared to roads in metropolitan Melbourne. Specific countermeasures can help to address the higher risk on country roads.
Public education: Public education is a key mechanism to address fatigued driving, in the absence of fatigue detection devices or enforcement measures.
Enforcement: While it is difficult to deter fatigued driving in the passenger vehicle fleet through enforcement, heavy vehicle operators can be targeted using Chain of Responsibility laws. Addressing fatigued driving among non-heavy vehicle operators in the future will require an emphasis on technological advancements, rather than enforcement.
Vehicle technology: Research will continue into in-vehicle fatigue warning and detection devices. However, the only effective cure for fatigue is sleep. This should be kept in mind when assessing in-vehicle devices to reduce fatigue related crashes.
Infrastructure: Engineering treatments designed to address head-on crashes are effective ways to address fatigue related crashes, with fatigue estimated to contribute to more than half of all fatal head-on crashes. Similarly, measures to reduce the crash severity of run-off-road crashes will also limit the impact of fatigue on trauma.
Heavy vehicles: Heavy vehicles are estimated to be involved in twice as many fatigue related crashes as other vehicles. While this does not necessarily mean that the truck driver is the fatigued person in these crashes, it does identify the heavy vehicle industry as a key audience for education about fatigue.
What the strategy will do
Measures taken through arrive alive 2008 - 2017 to reduce the incidence and severity of fatigue related crashes will include:
- Increasing enforcement and enforceability of Chain of Responsibility laws.
- Increasing motorist awareness of the fatigue/crash relationship.
- Designing and modifying roads and roadsides to address head-on and run-off-road crashes through treatments such as road duplication, roadside and centre-road barriers, centre-road rumble lines, overtaking lanes and removal of roadside hazards such as trees and poles.
- Improving existing and providing additional rest stop facilities.
- Encouraging the development of new in-vehicle technologies that identify the onset of fatigue.
- Developing a robust test for fatigue to strengthen enforcement.
