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When the cost in human life and monetary terms of driver fatigue is so high, can we be sure drivers' hours rules are enough?
THE DRIVERS' HOURS rules were designed to prevent fatigued driving and are now more rigorously and punitively enforced than ever. But when 40% of fatigue collisions involve commercial vehicle drivers, are the rules up to the job?
Driver fatigue is considered a contributory factor in up to 20% of road accidents, and up to one quarter of fatal and serious accidents - 40% of these collisions involve commercial vehicle drivers. There were also 6,300 fines issued for drivers' hours breaches between April 2015 and March 2016. However there is no data showing how many fatigued drivers were outside their driving hours, as opposed to unsafe within a permissible shift.
EC Regulation 561/2006 on drivers' hours and tachographs, which allow drivers to drive for 4.5 hours before taking a break, and nine hours in total, was reviewed just three years ago. The domestic drivers' hours regulations, which allow 11 hours duty time and 10 hours driving, were reviewed in 2010. And yet clearly problems remain. The rules themselves are not necessarily sufficient to prevent drowsy driving, so either the rules need to be amended, or the industry's implementation of them must change.
The experts we spoke to all agreed on one thing - fatigue is poorly understood in the UK. They also noted that industry uses the drivers' hours rules as a target or prescription, and not as a legal maximum within which they must find a safe accommodation based on the individual and the nature of the job.
HGV drivers' hours rules
Psychologist Charles Johnson is technical director of CAS. a consultancy specialising in the human factors of safety-critical work. He said there is EU-wide evidence that the introduction of HGV drivers' hours rules substantially reduced collision rates. "The rules were the best they could devise at the time, but they aren't perfect. There...