Procedures for Investigating and Reporting Fatigue Contributions to Marine Casualties

Abstract

This project was aimed at identifying strategies for improving current U. S. Coast Guard (USCG) procedures for investigating, reporting, and analyzing fatigue contributions to marine casualties. The focus was on evaluating the contribution of fatigue in vessel and personnel injury casualties. A total of 397 casualties were investigated. Fatigue contributed to 16 percent of the critical vessel casualties and 33 percent of the personnel injury casualties. These estimates were substantially greater than the ones currently available from the USCG Marine Investigations Module (MINMOD) database. Analyses identified three potential indicators of fatigue: (1) the number of fatigue symptoms reported by mariners, (2) the number of hours worked in the 24 hours prior to a casualty; and (3) the number of hours slept in those 24 hours. This study demonstrated the feasibility of using simple procedures to obtain meaningful data on the contribution of fatigue in transportation accidents.

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