The long weekend is fast approaching and several people will be making road trips to their destinations. This can be a commute from the Lower Mainland to the Okanagan, or simply to a friend’s house the next town over. 
With the greater number of road users, there is a greater likelihood of an incident. For that reason, there are a number of campaigns to remind road users of the importance of road safety. These topics include drinking and driving, seat belt use, distracted driving, and others.
Since we focus our efforts on workplace health and safety, we will leave the weekend travel messages to other great organizations, such as ICBC and the RCMP. While those messages are important for road safety, we will focus our message on fatigue in the workplace.
We have to consider the kind of impact a long weekend could have on our safe work performance. If we consider all things we are planning to do during a weekend, especially a long weekend, it is easy to get carried away and forget we eventually have to get back to work.
One common thing that gets overlooked during the weekend is the need to get enough rest. Why would anyone worry about getting to bed early enough if you can sleep in? That is the thought that leads to staying up longer because you are at someone’s house, or staying up late to catch up on your favorite TV show.
The challenge with disrupting your sleep pattern during the weekend is that we all have to eventually get back to work. By limiting the amount of rest we get, there is a greater likelihood of fatigue. This could easily be the reason why Monday mornings get such a bad rap.
If you take a look at our Fatigue Management infographic, you will notice we highlight a study that compared the effects of fatigue with a person consuming alcohol. It found that a person who had been awake for 18 hours experienced similar effects to a person with 0.05% BAC.
This means that this study indicates the similarities between alcohol consumption and fatigue.
If you are wondering if WorkSafeBC is aware of this, the answer is yes. They published that study long before we did. Those study results are an important part of the statement below, which has been taken from the Workers’ Compensation Act. :
“ensure that the worker’s ability to work without risk to his or her health or safety, or to the health or safety of any other person, is not impaired by alcohol, drugs or other causes,”
It is important to understand that working fatigued is considered working impaired. If an incident ever causes significant damage, such as loss of life, and the accident investigation determines a causal factor was fatigue, the employer would be accountable.
It is important for drivers to be educated on the factors that can lead to fatigue. Our Fatigue Research Summary lists several factors that can lead to fatigue. An example of a few include lifestyle, sleep disorders, drugs and alcohol, and rest between shifts.
Contact a Safety Advisor at SafetyDriven – Trucking Safety Council of BC to get support in fatigue management. You can also check our website under the Fatigue Management page for more resources
22 total views, no views today