Combating Driver Fatigue with GPS Fleet Tracking

24 Aug 2015

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) is made to regulate the amount of hours that truck drivers are allowed to operate to keep them from driving fatigued and improve highway safety. The US Department of Transportation is duty-bound and required to use the best science available when developing these regulations.

The Hours of Service regulation was published in December 2011 in the Federal Register for the Drivers Final Rule was effective in February 2012 and the remaining provisions compliance date was July 1, 2013.

Basically, although the rule was complicated, it came down to a couple of updated requirements. The first was that drivers were required to take a 30 minute break to rest within their first eight hours of their shift. This is to keep them alert while driving on the road. The second was for them to take a ‘restart’ which is a 34-hour rest period once every 7 days.

Also required was that at least two periods of resting should be between the hours of 1am and 5am. This would allow the drivers to get a very real rest allowing them to catch up on their sleep before they began another long work week. This would reduce the drivers’ hours from 82 hours to 70 hours.

Quite frequently, it’s not known how often drivers take on long commutes to get back to their workplace. Because of this, legislation introduced by Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) would require a study of extreme commuting so they could properly analyze how much risk the drivers were facing when arriving and departing from their workplace after a full day. Drivers’ exhaustion has led to serious and sometimes fatal accidents.

A crash can represent a substantial cost to your business and fleet, particularly when there is injury or death involved. These costs include:

  • Workers compensation
  • Time off work
  • Legal costs
  • Insurance excesses
  • Lowered morale of worker
  • Negative publicity of business
  • Increase in insurance rates

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) collected data that showed that fatigued drivers actually cause 100,000 crashes annually, injure over 40,000 and killing over 1500. Since certainty of driver fatigue can’t always be determined, this number could be higher.

Fleet GPS tracking software can help to avoid these issues. Carriers can use HOS compliant electronic driver logs to decrease the number of fatigued drivers. These e-logs can help prevent drivers from driving extensive hours without taking the right amount of breaks, eliminate accidents and prevent driver fatigue. It doesn’t involve any paperwork. It’s a concise record of the hours worked and a look inside of your fleet’s productivity.

Call us here at LiveView GPS toll free at 1-888-544-0494 – Monday through Friday from 9 am – 5 pm PST for a GPS fleet tracking demo today.


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We specialize in real time GPS tracking systems. GPS tracking, GPS monitoring and management for vehicles, assets, equipment, property and persons. Whether your needs are consumer or commercial based, personal or business related we have a cost effective GPS tracking solution for you. Locate in real-time and on demand vehicles, people and property from any web based computer. View these locations on our systems integrated maps. Our GPS devices are the real deal, they are tested and proven, they work.