The Impact of Driving, Non-driving Work, and Rest Breaks on Driving Performance in Commercial Vehicle Operations

Current hours-of-service (HOS) regulations prescribe limits to commercial motor vehicle (CMV) drivers' operating hours. Besides assessing activities performed in the 14-hour workday, the relationship between safety-critical events (SCEs) and driving hours, work hours, and breaks was investigated. The data used in the analyses were collected in the Naturalistic Truck Driving Study and included 97 drivers and about 735,000 miles of continuous driving data. The assessment of the drivers' workday determined that, on average, drivers spent 66 percent of their shift driving, 23 percent in non-driving work, and 11 percent resting. Analyses on driving hours (i.e., driving only) and SCE risk found a time-on-task effect across hours. Analyses on work hours (i.e., driving in addition to non-driving work) found that risk of being involved in an SCE increased as work hours increased. This suggests that time-on-task effects may not be related to driving hours alone, but implies an interaction between driving hours and work hours: if a driver begins the day with several hours of non-driving work, followed by driving that goes deep into the 14- hour workday, SCE risk was found to increase. The finding from the workday characterization that drivers spent approximately 23 percent of their workday performing non-driving work provides a possible explanation for this time-on-task effect across work hours. Breaks from driving were found to be beneficial in reducing SCEs (during 1- hour window after a break) and were effective to counteract the negative effects of time-on-task.