Trucking companies could do more to enforce rules that drivers get enough rest, and the government should consider moving toward mandating the use of new technologies to alert tired truckers, the Associated Press reported.
While drivers are responsible to make sure they get adequate rest, trucking companies and the government also should study new technologies to help keep drivers alert, AP said, citing findings by the National Transportation Safety Board.
The NTSB hearing, held last week in Washington, was in response to an early-morning crash in western Wisconsin three years ago in which a bus carrying a high school band slammed into an overturned tractor-trailer rig, which killed five people, AP said.
NTSB concluded that the truck driver fell asleep, and when he swerved back onto the road, his rig overturned. The bus then crashed into the truck.
Some technology still in the early stages — such as a dashboard-mounted camera that tracks a driver’s eye and eyelid movements that could alert a driver who appears to be falling asleep — could eventually prevent such fatigue-induced crashes, one NTSB investigator told the board, AP reported.
