Fatigue after a delayed overnight run
You are a line-haul driver rostered to leave at 22:00 for a 520 km overnight run. Your previous shift ended at 15:00 the same day after a 12-hour spread that included a two-hour loading delay. You slept badly the night before - about four hours. At 01:30, 180 km into the run, you notice heavy eyelids, drifting lane position and a strong urge to keep the heater on. Your logbook shows you have accumulated 11 hours of driving in the last 24 hours. The next rest area with facilities is 45 km ahead; a small gravel pull-off is 3 km ahead.
1. Assess your fatigue state against your work and rest records, and decide what you must do in the next few minutes.
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The symptoms - heavy eyelids, lane drift, and using heat to stay awake - are classic microsleep warning signs, not ordinary tiredness. They mean your ability to monitor your own performance is already degraded, so you cannot 'push through' safely.
Against the records: 11 hours of driving in 24 hours is close to the standard heavy vehicle limit, and you started this shift only seven hours after finishing a 12-hour spread, on roughly four hours' sleep. The short sleep and short turnaround compound the driving hours - the regulation minimum rest is not the same as adequate rest, and fatigue risk is a function of both.
The immediate action is to stop at the gravel pull-off 3 km ahead, not to gamble on reaching the rest area 45 km away. A 45 km leg at highway speed is roughly 30–40 minutes during which a microsleep is a realistic risk. Stop, take a short nap (about 15–20 minutes), and reassess. If you are still symptomatic after the nap, you must not continue and should contact your operator to arrange relief or a longer rest. Caffeine and fresh air are stopgaps, not substitutes for sleep.
2. Outline the fatigue-management decisions you should have made before departing, and what you must record now.
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Before departure, the correct decisions were:
- Assess fitness for duty honestly. Four hours' sleep after a 12-hour spread is a red flag. You should have raised it with the scheduler rather than accepting the 22:00 start.
- Plan rest around the driving task. A 520 km overnight run needs planned breaks, not an assumption that you will feel fine. Build in a rest stop at roughly the halfway point and identify fallback stopping places in advance.
- Check the roster against the hours rules. Seven hours between shifts may satisfy a minimum but leaves little recovery time; the operator's scheduling should account for actual rest, not just the legal floor.
Now, you must record the stop accurately in your work diary - the time, location and duration of the rest - and record the reason for the delay. Do not backfill or tidy the log to hide the late start. If you hand over to relief, record the changeover. Accurate records protect you in an investigation and let the operator see the pattern that caused the risk.