Essay Sample on Reduce Fatigue - Related Accidents

Fatigue is an overall body feeling of tiredness or lack of energy that can be the result of exhaustion due to day to day human activities (Phillips 2015). Fatigue can cause accidents when one forces himself or herself to do something at a point when they are too much exhausted. Fatigue-related accidents are accidents that are a result of fatigue, which is an overall body feeling of tiredness. Human beings need to be awake and alert to be at their very best to perform their duties with limited risks. Human fatigue is a severe issue influencing the safety of the migrant public in all modes of transportation either in the private sector or the public sector, and all people are always encouraged to rest when they feel any symptom of fatigue in their bodies.

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Human fatigue is equally a symptom of health management and poor sleep, fatigue lowers a person's ability to stay awake, attentive and alert and this reduces their ability to perform their various chores, i.e., the drivers who need to be awake while driving while either in the private sector or the public sector to save their lives and the lives of the passengers to whom they might be carrying to various destinations (Mohamed et al., 2012). Fatigue generally impairs the human's ability to judge just how exhausted we are at some points in life.

Most accidents are as a result of reckless driving by the drivers due to the fatigue they might be experiencing due to the overwork they perform and the long distance they might be covered when driving. Driver fatigue contributes too many accidents that occur in most places every year in that many drivers fall asleep as they drive, or some at least are found nodding off at least once in a while as they drive (Hartley 2018). Fatigue is not only a problem to drivers but generally to many at more significant, and it affects everybody in that at some point, everybody feels exhausted due to the different work that they perform typically. Fatigue not only affects drivers but also people at the workplace in that it causes accidents in the workplace that results in costly mistakes. Sleep-related fatigue can also be caused by different drugs that an individual might use and results in the harmful effects due to the toxic nature of the drugs he or she might be using.

Fatigue is a significant safety concern in many areas but specifically in the transportation sector in that it can result in disastrous accidents. Fatigue is considered an internal precondition for improper acts because it negatively affects the human operator's internal state. Fatigue can be a symptom of medical problems, but mostly, it's a physiological reaction to exertion, lack of sleep, boredom, and changes to sleep-wake schedules or stress. Fatigue can be in two forms that are the physical or mental, physical fatigue is the inability to continue operating the normal abilities while mental fatigue might as a result of sleepiness or slowness (Dawson et al., 2012). A person with mental fatigue may fall asleep, may react to action slowly, yet the work needs a quick response, or the person might be attentive.

The three main factors in driver fatigue that results in most accidents include a Circadian rhythm effect, which describes the tendency for humans to experience a normal cycle inattentiveness and sleepiness throughout the day (Authority 2014). Individuals with a conventional sleep pattern experience more periods of maximum fatigue in the early hours of the morning and lesser period in the early afternoon. During the low points, one experiences lower attention, and he or she may be inactive. Finally, sleep deprivation and cumulative fatigue effects that explain how one night's sleep does not instantly reduce individuals who fail to get the adequate sleeping time that is the sleep deficit that accumulates with successive sleep-deprived days and additional fatigue, sleep deficit. More so, Industrial Fatigue that describes fatigue that is collected during the work duration and effects performance at different times during the shift.

To reduce the fatigue-related accidents, more safety recommendations addressing the fatigue-related problems across all modes of transportation (Hirshkowitz, & Sharafkhaneh 2018). All vehicle operators must be better educated about medical conditions and impairing drugs that can impact the quality and duration of sleep. Speed regulators should also be installed in every vehicle to regulate the speed at which vehicles move at to avoid the reckless over speeding those results to accidents. Companies must also establish fatigue risks management programs that helping continuous monitoring of their success to reduce the fatigue-related accidents for individuals performing the safety-critical tasks (Li et al., 2019)

In conclusion, fatigue-related accidents are so much disastrous to the world and the economy, too; it causes too much loss and damage. We are encouraged to follow the recommendations that are revised by the relevant bodies to void the fatigue based accidents.

References

Authority, C. A. S. (2014). Biomathematical Fatigue Models. Civil Aviation Safety Authority.Dawson, D., Chapman, J., & Thomas, M. J. (2012). Fatigue-proofing: a new approach to reducing fatigue-related risk using the principles of error management. Sleep medicine reviews, 16(2), 167-175. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2011.05.004

Hartley, L. R. (2018). Fatigue and driving: Driver impairment, driver fatigue, and driving simulation. Routledge.Hirshkowitz, M., & Sharafkhaneh, A. (2018). Fatigue Management. In Fatigue Management (pp. 193-217). Springer, New York, NY.

Li, M. K., Yu, J. J., Ma, L., & Zhang, W. (2019). Modeling and mitigating fatigue-related accident risk of taxi drivers. Accident Analysis & Prevention, 123, 79-87. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2018.11.001

Mohamed, N., Mohd-Yusoff, M. F., Othman, I., Zulkipli, Z. H., Osman, M. R., & Voon, W. S. (2012). Fatigue-related crashes involving express buses in Malaysia: Will the proposed policy of banning the early-hour operation reduce fatigue-related crashes and benefit overall road safety? Accident Analysis & Prevention, 45, 45-49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2011.09.025

Phillips, R. O. (2015). A review of definitions of fatigue-And A step towards a whole definition. Transportation research part F: traffic psychology and behavior, 29, 48-56. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trf.2015.01.003