CVSA COMMITTEE AND PROGRAM NEWS
What Do These Six Crashes Have in Common?
By Rodolfo Giacoman, Fatigue Management Specialist, Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance Can you spot the common denominators in these six crashes?
1. Collision of Motorcoach with Combination Vehicles Parked Along Exit Ramp to I-70 Rest Area At 1:48 a.m. on July 12, 2023, a motorcoach carrying 21 people veered off I-70 near Highland, Illinois, colliding with three parked combination vehicles. Three passengers died. The driver and 11 other passengers sustained injuries of varying severity.
2. Combination Vehicle Rollover, Fire and I-95 Overpass Collapse At 6:17 a.m. on June 11, 2023, a truck-tractor with a tank trailer carrying 8,500 gallons of gasoline crashed while exiting northbound I-95 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The driver lost control on a curved exit ramp, causing the truck to overturn and strike a concrete barrier. The resulting fire destroyed the truck, caused the collapse of the northbound I-95 lanes and fatally injured the truck driver.
3. Box Truck Centerline Crossover Collision with Bus At 6 a.m. on Jan. 28, 2023, a bus and a box truck collided head-on on New York State Route 37 in Louisville, New York. The truck crossed the centerline, striking the bus, which was transporting workers to a construction site. This crash resulted in six fatalities, two serious injuries and five minor injuries among the bus passengers, along with minor injuries to the bus driver and serious injuries to the truck driver.
4. Rear-End Collision Between Combination Vehicle and Medium-Size Bus At 1:36 a.m. on Dec. 16, 2022, a trucktractor with a semitrailer crashed into the rear of a slower-moving bus on I-64 near Williamsburg, Virginia. The truck, traveling between 65 and 70 mph with cruise control, did not brake before impact, while the bus was moving at 20 to 25 mph. The collision resulted in the deaths of three bus occupants, serious injuries to nine bus occupants and the truck driver, and minor injuries to 11 bus occupants.
5. Multivehicle Collision Involving Milk Tank Combination Vehicle and Stopped Traffic Queue At 10:07 p.m. on June 9, 2021, a trucktractor with a tank trailer crashed into a queue of stopped passenger vehicles on State Route 202 in Phoenix, Arizona. Traveling at 62 to 64 mph without slowing or steering, the truck initiated a chain-reaction collision involving six other vehicles. The crash resulted in four fatalities and 11 injuries among passenger vehicle occupants, with the truck-tractor and one car consumed by fire.
6. Multivehicle Crash in a Queue of Slowed and Stopped Traffic At 6:45 a.m. on June 12, 2020, a trucktractor with a semitrailer struck the end of a traffic queue of slowed and stopped vehicles on I-39 near Arlington, Wisconsin, which had formed due to prior collisions. This initiated an eight-vehicle crash that resulted in four fatalities and three serious injuries. All but one of these crashes occurred in the 2 to 6 a.m. window, the lowest point of a typical circadian rhythm when the body’s drive for sleep is strongest. The exception occurred in the late evening, the typical highest peak of homeostatic sleep pressure, when the body’s timer drive for sleep is strongest. All crashes involved fatalities, injuries and major damage – main features of fatiguerelated crashes. In fatigue-related crashes, drivers do not brake. While many drivers may operate at those times without incident, another common factor in these six crashes, revealed only after a thorough National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation, was an irregular schedule. Check the sources at the end of this article for the NTSB investigation reports on each of these six crashes to learn about the crash specifics, the lessons learned and the NTSB recommendations. These reports are a must-read for motor carrier principals and safety managers. Adopting regular schedules and sound scheduling practices, as recommended by the North American Fatigue Management Program (NAFMP), is essential for preventing fatigue-related crashes, maintaining driver alertness and enhancing operational efficiency. NAFMP offers a free online course, Module 9: Driver Scheduling and Tools, available at lms.nafmp.org.
Additionally, a recording of the June 25 webinar, “The Scheduling Puzzle: Sleep Science and Driver Fatigue,” provides practical applications of sleep science to scheduling and staffing. The webinar is available at nafmp.org/webinars. Anyone involved in driver scheduling must understand how sleep architecture, circadian rhythm, sleep pressure and brain wave speeds affect a driver’s alertness to prevent crashes and maximize productivity.
Understanding the Physiological Roots of Fatigue in Scheduling Several key physiological factors contribute to driver fatigue, each directly influenced by scheduling decisions:
Time of Day: The human body's circadian
clock naturally promotes alertness during the day and sleep at night. Operating between midnight and 7 a.m. significantly increases fatigue. Schedules requiring extensive night driving counteract this natural rhythm, leading to poorer quality sleep during the day and increased fatigue while driving. Recent Sleep: Most individuals need
between six and nine hours of sleep for optimal function. Sleep deprivation in the last 24 hours can be a significant fatigue factor. Scheduling practices that consistently reduce sleep time opportunity directly contribute to this deprivation. Continuous Hours Awake: Being awake
for more than 16 consecutive hours since the last major sleep period dramatically increases fatigue due to homeostatic sleep pressure. Long hauls without adequate breaks for restorative sleep, a common outcome of poorly planned schedules, push drivers into this dangerous zone. Cumulative Sleep Debt: Accumulated sleep
debt must be repaid. More than eight hours of accumulated sleep debt since the last full night of sleep, including disrupted sleep, is a major fatigue factor. Schedules offering inconsistent rest periods or forcing drivers to constantly "catch up" on sleep contribute to this chronic issue. Gradual Schedule Changes: The body's
circadian rhythm adapts slowly to changes. When shifting work schedules, do so gradually, ideally by no more than 1-2 hours per week. Drastically altering sleep-wake times overnight can lead to significant desynchronization between the internal clock and the external environment, exacerbating fatigue and impairing performance for several days until the body fully adjusts. Continued on next page THIRD QUARTER 2025
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