Fatal Accidents among Car and Truck Drivers: Effects of Fatigue, Age, and Alcohol Consumption

Abstract

Fatigue increases the risk of an accident if the driver, on recognizing symptoms of fatigue, does not stop driving. We studied whether a tendency to continue the current activity and complete the task especially affects younger drivers, who are more susceptible to motivational pressures at the wheel in general. The data consisted of Finnish in-depth studies on 586 single-vehicle and 1357 multiple-vehicle accidents in which at least one vehicle occupant died. When excluding alcohol-related cases, the results showed that, first, trailer-truck drivers who either fell asleep or were tired to a degree that contributed to the accident were younger than those involved in the other fatalities. For car drivers, the proportion of fatigue-related cases was approximately constant in each age group, but a variation was seen when studied according to the time of day of the accident, mainly resulting from two distinct peaks. The first was in young drivers 18 to 20 years old between midnight and 6:00 a.m. The other occurred in drivers 56 years and older during the late afternoon hours. These data also indicate that in terms of fatal accidents, fatigue and alcohol seem to be less of a problem for truckers than for car drivers.