In The News

NTSB pushes for fatigue reduction

In response to a tractor-trailer rollover that triggered a collision of a motorcoach, the National Transportation Safety Board this week repeated safety recommendations made last September to counteract the effects of fatigued commercial drivers and to reduce the occurrence of fatigue in the first place.


NTSB on Feb. 2 wrote letters to Rose A. McMurray, acting deputy administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, and Ronald Medford, acting deputy administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The letters repeated NTSB’s Sept. 16, 2008, recommendations that:


• FMCSA develop and implement a plan to deploy technologies in commercial vehicles to reduce fatigue-related accidents;


• FMCSA develop and use a methodology that will continually assess the effectiveness of the fatigue management plans implemented by motor carriers, including their ability to improve sleep and alertness, mitigate performance errors, and prevent incidents and accidents;


• NHTSA determine whether equipping commercial vehicles with collision warning systems with active braking and electronic stability control systems will reduce commercial vehicle accidents. The agency should require their use on commercial vehicles if they are found effective.

NTSB also reiterated its previous recommendation that NHTSA determine rules on adaptive cruise control and collision warning system performance standards for new commercial vehicles. Those standards should address obstacle detection distance, timing of alerts, and human factor guidelines, such as the mode and type of warning, NTSB said.


A FMCSA spokesman said he had no comment about the NTSB letter.


A NHTSA spokesman said his agency has conducted a field test with Volvo trucks and U.S. Express and collaborated on a study with Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. Those tests found safety benefits from using technology but presented different conclusions about the source of the benefits. Because of the different findings, the agency said it did not have "sufficient certainty about safety benefits ... to justify rulemaking and is conducting additional work."


The crash that sparked NTSB’s recommendations occurred just before 2 a.m. on Oct. 16, 2005. A Whole Foods Market tractor-trailer traveling westbound on Interstate 94 near Osseo, Wis., left the right-hand lane and traveled along the earthen roadside before re-entering the highway, where it overturned, blocking both westbound lanes. A minute later, a chartered 55-passenger motorcoach, carrying members of a high school band, crashed into the underside of the overturned truck. The crash killed the motorcoach driver and four passengers, while 35 passengers and the truck driver suffered injuries.


NTSB also made a safety recommendation to Whole Foods to set up a fatigue education program that requires company management to ensure that employees understand the risks of driving while fatigued and comply with fatigue guidelines. A Whole Foods spokesperson said the company couldn’t comment because of ongoing litigation.


Preventing commercial vehicle collisions has been an NTSB priority for several years. It issued its recommendation urging rulemaking on adaptive cruise control and collision warning systems on May 25, 2001, and added it to its “Most Wanted List” in 2007.


NTSB has said it believes that “developing and installing new technologies – such as adaptive cruise control and collision warning systems – in commercial trucks, buses and passenger vehicles will substantially reduce accidents.” The agency cited U.S. Department of Transportation estimates that 48 percent of police-reported accidents could be prevented by using rear-end or lane-departure warning systems.


In 2005 USDOT signed a research agreement with a private consortium led by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute to build and test an integrated vehicle-based safety system designed to prevent rear-end, lane change and run-off-the-road crashes. On Feb. 3, UMTRI joined with Con-way Freight to begin field testing the IVBSS. The company will be testing 10 Class 8 tractors equipped with the technology over the next 10 months.