Motorcoach Driver Fatigue Study 2011: Research Brief

NHTSA · 2012 · ROSA P / United States. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration

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Summary

This research brief evaluates whether commercial motorcoach drivers operate at the limits of Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) hours-of-service (HOS) regulations. The study was motivated by concerns that existing regulations, which permit 10–15 hours on duty after 8 hours off, could lead to "backwardly rotating" schedules. Such schedules would desynchronize drivers from the normal 24-hour sleep/wake cycle, potentially resulting in truncated sleep, degraded performance, and increased fatigue. The primary objective was to determine if drivers pushed these regulatory limits or maintained standard work/rest cycles. The study involved 84 motorcoach drivers from Charter, Tour, Regular Route, and Commuter Express operations who volunteered to participate. Subjects were monitored for an average of 31 consecutive days while maintaining their normal schedules. Data collection utilized four specific measures: duty/sleep diaries to record duty start, break, and end times; wrist-worn actigraphs to generate minute-by-minute sleep/wake histories; computerized tests to assess performance upon starting and ending duty; and subjective ratings of fatigue and sleepiness at the same intervals. The findings indicate that the drivers in the sample worked well within HOS regulatory limits. Duty start times clustered in the early to mid-morning, with Regular Route and Commuter Express drivers starting earlier than Charter or Tour drivers. This distribution reflected a normal work/rest schedule rather than the feared backwardly rotating pattern. The mean duty period was slightly over 9 hours, rarely exceeding the 15-hour regulatory maximum. Drivers were on duty approximately 65% of the studied days, averaging 43 hours per week. Actigraph data showed that average total sleep time per 24 hours fell within the recommended range of 7 to 9 hours. Sleep duration was longer on off-duty days, and on duty days, longer duty times correlated with shorter sleep. Performance decreased and subjective fatigue and sleepiness increased from the start to the end of duty periods, with Commuter Express drivers showing the smallest increase in fatigue. The study concludes that motorcoach operations in this sample involved typical morning start times, approximately 9-hour duty days, and adequate sleep averages. The results suggest that, contrary to theoretical concerns, these drivers did not push regulatory limits to create desynchronized schedules. Instead, they maintained a standard circadian rhythm with work during the day and sleep at night. The research provides empirical evidence that current HOS regulations, when adhered to as observed in this sample, support a sustainable work/rest balance without the severe sleep truncation associated with backwardly rotating schedules.

Key finding

Sampled motorcoach drivers worked a mean duty period of just over 9 hours and averaged 7 to 9 hours of sleep per 24 hours, operating well within hours-of-service limits.

Methodology

field_study

Sample size: 84

Provenance

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Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.

Topics

Ranked by relevance to this paper. Hover a topic for its definition.

• hours of service
• truck driver fatigue
• shift work driving
• time on task
• bus coach
• circadian factors

Information type

What kind of knowledge this paper contributes, grouped by family — independent of topic (what it is about) and method (how it was studied).

• Empirical Findings: physiological data