A data-matching study of the role of fatigue in work-related crashes

Abstract

This study investigated fatigue involvement in work and nonwork-related road traffic casualty crashes using a dataset formed by linking the New South Wales workers compensation dataset with the New South Wales road traffic crash database. In many crash databases work-relatedness cannot be identified. Other databases, such as workers compensation data provide information on work-related road traffic injury but little on the circumstances of the crash. Probabilistic linkage overcame these problems by matching cases from the workers compensation data to the crash data to produce a new dataset of work-related road traffic casualties. The patterns of fatigue-involvement in these casualty crashes showed similarities between work-related crashes and nonwork-related crashes. Fatigue-involved crashes were more likely to result in fatality, involved higher costs, were more likely to involve heavy and light trucks and to involve illegal alcohol or speeding no matter whether they were work-related or not. Time of crash was the only characteristic that differed between work and nonwork-related crashes. Work-related fatigue-involved crashes tended to occur around dawn whereas work-related non-fatigue crashes occurred in peak hour traffic. Timing of work-related crashes involving fatigue varied little across the 24-h period whereas those not involving fatigue showed an afternoon peak only. While fatigue-related crashes occur in similar ways regardless of work status, strategies for work-related driver fatigue should not be left to be addressed only by general road safety strategies. As there is more control in the workplace over some of the fundamental causes of driver fatigue work-related fatigue management strategies are much more likely to be successful.