Circadian rhythm for drivers in retail distribution: actual crash results

There is a great deal of discussion in the industry about the impact of hour of day on driver performance. The question is, in general, are certain hours of the day inherently more dangerous than others, and specifically, are drivers more likely to crash between the hours of midnight and 5:00 a.m.? The general assumption is that due to circadian rhythm, the nature rhythm of human beings, we are more likely to be sleepy between midnight and 5:00 a.m., and therefore truck crashes are more frequent. The authors were able to use actual data for analysis. The objective of the study is to use actual dispatch and crash data to measure driver behavior across the day. The goal of this report is to describe this specific, common business pattern, and to use actual data to describe the impact of time of day, within this business pattern, on driver safety. Specifically, this study addressed the issue of whether the data supports the well established thesis that truck operations between the hours of midnight and 5:00 a.m. are the most dangerous.