1 t is dangerous and illegal to drive when you
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are too tired to function properly. Fatigue causes lack of concentration, euphoria and a misguided confidence in your own ability; and it's all too easy to nod off. The
only answer to tiredness is rest—whatever your schedule.
A report just published by Professor Andrew Guppy of Middlesex University says that 2.5% of truck drivers suffer from dangerous levels of fatigue on the road because they are too busy to take a break: but at what cost? In 1997 a similar study blamed so% of all road accidents and up to 20% of motorway accidents on driver fatigue.
Anyone in charge of a vehicle weigh
ing 3.5 tonnes or more is subject to the EU drivers' hours laws which limit driving time to to hours a day for two days of the week and nine hours a day the rest of the week. Rest periods of 45 minutes must be taken after 4.5 hours on the road, although these breaks can be taken in 15-minute chunks. Rest means exactly that—not unloading, or catching up on the paperwork.
But a glance at Commercial Motor's legal news pages will confirm that tachographs are far from foolproof. From crudely scratching charts with pins or pulling fuses, through to sophisticated electronic devices, there are a number of ways to distort the records. Not surprisingly, the authorities take a dim view of this; punishments range
from fines to loss of licence. But the current law does not prevent offenders setting up again under a different name.
At the moment, transport is not covered by the EU's Working Time Directive, which limits the average working week to 48 hours and became law in the UK on October 1998.
When the directive was introduced operators claimed exemption on the grounds that the drivers' hours laws already ensured that their drivers took enough breaks. Recent research shows that in many cases this is simply not the case.
Guppy sent a questionnaire to 2,200 HGV drivers and 420 managers, asking how often they drove when feeling tired; how far they drove on business every week; how they felt about taking breaks; and how such breaks were viewed within their organisations.
Of the 720 responses he received, 7% of drivers reported driving when tired "very often" or "quite often", with another 21% saying they "sometimes" drove when tired.
Some 24% of drivers felt that the schedule imposed on them by their employers made it difficult to take breaks when tired—and 30% of managers claimed that drivers would rather keep driving than stop to take the mandatory breaks.
One owner-driver wrote: "The money's not there for us to take regular breaks. There are better rates for emergency work, and that means no stopping. I've driven for zo hours without a rest, but if a can of Red Bull doesn't work I will stop."
There are other temptations to skip proper rest periods. With rats in some parts of the country as low as a mile, many drivers find the £12 stopover charge levied by most service areas can be enough to make the trip unworthwhile. With the risk of theft, parking up in a quiet road or lay-by to snatch a couple of hours' sleep is something a lot of drivers avoid.
The Transport & General Workers Union is increasingly concerned about driver fatigue, and is campaigning for the extension of the Working Time Directive to the transport industry. T&G spokesman Graham Stevenson says the union looks forward to the introduction of digital tachographs which will be more difficult to fiddle than current models. It also wants to negotiate workplace agreements which cover scheduling and paid holiday for all transport workers.
Blocked
But employers have consistently blocked the directive's introduction since they were first served with a White Paper putting forward various options for its application to the industry in 1996.
"We have spent years discussing this and employers have refused to co-operate," says Stevenson. "When negotiations between employers and workers' representatives failed to reach a conclusion after a second consultation paper was published in 1998, the European Commission lost patience and drew up its own proposal. We're concerned with a few aspects of this, but on the whole we want it accepted. We're launching a poster and leaflet campaign this month to draw public attention to the issue— tired drivers are a danger to themselves and the public."
But does the directive match the needs of hauliers themselves? Stuart Parrott is the director of Huntingdon-based MIA Movements which specialises in the
movement of anything from art operating table to a complete factory. He needs to know that his staff are wide awake before they start moving
hospital equipment around. To ensure that each employee is up to the job a member of the office staff is responsible for the health and general well-being of the workforce.
"We keep an eye on everybody to make sure they're not too stressed out—and I don't think they are," says Parrott. "We estimate for a job, and if it runs over we charge the customer extra. We don't work more than 12 hours at a stretch, and if someone on a gang is tired they all go off on a break."
As far as possible, MIA Movements operates between 08:30-17:oohrs. "Anything over that is counterproductive," Parrott believes. Shifts are scheduled in, and employees take particularly arduous jobs on rotation.
All tachograph charts are sent off for analysis each week, Parrott remarks that the company's vehicles are stopped and checked by the police fairly regularly, but the company works closely with them anyway because it carries abnormal loads.
He believes his drivers are quite happy with their schedules: "No-one has to work weekends if they don't want to, and I pick who works every day. If someone has just had a hard day I'll give them a late start the following day."
Although MIA Movements is operating well within the current laws, Parrott believes that extending the Working
Time Directive to the transport industry would mean doubling his staff: "We'd have reached our quota by Wednesday evening—I'd have to bring in a whole new gang for the rest of the week. The directive would affect my business very seriously indeed."
Some operators who are concerned about the directive are not aware of the flexibility allowed within the rules. The 48-hour week has to be kept to an average over a reference period of 17 weeks. This allows for long overseas trips, as long as drivers' hours are subsequently adjusted to allow for additional hours worked while abroad.
Safeguards
The Working Time Directive will introduce critical safeguards against excessive working hours but, as Guppy's research shows, it is not necessarily the length of time spent at the wheel that causes fatigue. Many of the drivers who responded to his survey felt tired driving in the early hours of the morning and early afternoon, even at the beginning of a journey.