Feb 21, 2008

Hours of service issues on the railroads: part II, sleep deprivation and alertness

[Our series on Dr. Martin Moore-Ede's testimony before Congress continues]


1. Does sleep deprivation and fatigue significantly impair railroad employee alertness and vigilance in our railroads?
Much has been written in the scientific and industry literature, and already reported to this Subcommittee, on the prevalence of fatigue, or more precisely loss of attention and vigilance due to sleep deprivation in railroad employees. Like other transportation modes which operate 24/7 (twenty-four hours a day - 7 days a week), the railroads by their nature have to work continuously around the clock to perform their vital mission in our economy.

From the dispatchers to the yard workers, from the track repair crews and signalmen to the train crews, work and rest is driven by the incessant 24/7 demands of the business. This means work intrudes into the natural nocturnal hours of sleep, when staying alert is more challenging, and off-duty rest must be obtained during the daytime hours, when good quality sleep is more difficult to obtain.

Scientific research and industry experience both confirm that, because of our inherent human biology, sleep deprivation and fatigue is a significant issue for many railroad employees.

Train crews face special challenges. Even when trains are scheduled, as in the passenger railroads, the work patterns can lead to sleep disruption and fatigue. Train crews in most freight railroads work on-call, non-scheduled shifts.

The flow of trains across the system is impacted by weather, mechanical failure, track conditions and the schedules of shippers and receivers of freight, so that most train crews do not know precisely when they will be called to work. Thus not only do they work on irregular 24/7 schedules but many of them also have unpredictable hours of work and rest, making it difficult for employees to plan their sleep. You can, for example, be up all day at home and then get called with 2 hours notice at 11PM, just as you are climbing into bed, to operate a freight train for up to 12 hours throughout the night and into the next afternoon.


Related Posts:

* Hours of service issues on the railroads: part I

* Hours of service issues on the railroads: part III, safety threat?

* Hours of service issues on the railroads: part IV, increasing risk?

* Hours of service issues on the railroads: part V, hours of service rules

* Hours of service issues on the railroads: part VI, train control technology

* Hours of service issues on the railroads: part VII, alertness monitoring technology

* Hours of service issues on the railroads: part VIII, risk-informed fatigue management

* Hours of service issues on the railroads: part IX, parallel models

* Hours of service issues on the railroads: part X, how to proceed

No comments: