Citation

Smith M, Oppenhuis M, Koorey G. Proc. ARRB Group Bienn. Conf. 2006; 22(CD-ROM).

Affiliation

MWH New Zealand; University of Canterbury

Copyright

(Copyright © 2006, ARRB Group)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Fatigue is an insidious killer resulting in many fatal and serious injuries to vehicle occupants on road networks.  Fatigue has on  the whole had disappointing combined stakeholder national  strategic emphasis in New Zealand, yet continues to emerge as  one of the key factors in road crashes.  Worldwide there is an  increasing recognition that driver fatigue is over represented in  road crashes. The understanding of fatigue (and a strategy to  combat the issue) cannot be undertaken without a unified  approach incorporating education, engineering and  enforcement, along with a detailed understanding of the  location and cause of driver fatigue related crashes.  The main  objective of this research is to identify how terrain and  geometric alignment impact on the occurrence of fatigue related  crashes in New Zealand and their relationship to location and  terrain.  A review of the plots for the location of the crash  clusters indicates a good correlation between the location of  reported fatigue related crashes and the influence of terrain.  The research indicates that approximately 80 per cent of crash  clusters are located in areas of low demand.  Furthermore  between 45 and 65 per cent of all crashes have occurred in a  location where the driver has traveled from a higher demand  (load) area to a lower demand (unload) area.