August 19, 2019 - A recent Fatigue Risk Assessment on a mine site quickly opened the company’s eyes to the prevalence of operators falling asleep at the wheel of their 400-ton haul trucks.

Leaders recognized that fatigue can be a serious issue in mining operations and chose to install the Cat® Driver Safety System (DSS) in four of its haul trucks to establish baseline data on fatigue incidents.

The DSS uses facial recognition technology to detect physiological signs of fatigue and then alerts the operator if a brief sleep event called a “microsleep” occurs. The system alerts operators the instant they drift off and also notifies safety advisors in the Caterpillar 24/7 Fatigue Monitoring Center. These advisors then notify supervisors on site if they find an operator is at risk.

Over the first 40 days, more than 150 sleep events occurred. Data showed that multiple operators nodded off every day and collectively those operators traveled more than .25 kilometer (0.15 mile) while sleeping. When the mine translated that data into all of their haul trucks, they saw the potential of more than 900 microsleeps across the operation during that time.

The mine continued to collect data for another 90 days and began an initiative to change the safety culture — putting fatigue at the top of the agenda during operator meetings and finding opportunities to discuss this important topic. The mine also initiated a Fatigue Intervention Plan (FIP) — the protocol that is followed when a sleep event occurs.

After implementing its FIP for 30 days, the mine concluded its risk assessment with an overwhelming 94% reduction in fatigue events and continues to make fatigue management a top priority.

To learn more about the mine’s fatigue management journey — and the steps they took to mitigate the risk — read this case study.