Identifying and preventing fatigue
Fatigue can affect anyone and is believed to be a contributing factor in at least 12 percent of motor vehicle crashes.
When you're fatigued, your judgement and decision making become badly affected and you react more slowly than you would normally. What's more, you're less able to judge how tired you are, which means you're even more at risk of falling asleep at the wheel. This can have fatal consequences.
Find out more about driver fatigue.
Being proactive about avoiding fatigue
The commercial road transport toolkit for drivers and operators identifies a number of steps you can take to prevent fatigue.
Limits on working hours also apply to drivers of trucks and vehicles operating in passenger services. Find out more.
Driver training
A number of training courses are available to help raise drivers' awareness of fatigue prevention techniques. For more information, contact Tranzqual, the training organisation for the road transport industry, or ACC.
Looking for more information?
Explore these resources for more information on fatigue, and strategies for prevention.
- Injury prevention information from ACC (external link)
- A literature review on driver fatigue among drivers in the general public (NZ Transport Agency)
- Analysis of fatigue levels in New Zealand taxi and local-route truck drivers (Transport Engineering Research New Zealand)
- Health and fatigue - an introduction programme for drivers of heavy motor vehicles (NZ Transport Agency)
- Australian National Transport Commission publications:
- for the bus and coach industry (external link)
- for the truck industry (external link)
