In a court settlement with Public Citizen, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has agreed to reissue the rules. Public Citizen and other groups had filed a lawsuit contesting the regulations.

Under FMCSA’s Nov. 19, 2008 Final Rule on Hours of Service for Drivers, driving hours expanded from 10 to 11  hours within a 14-hour window. Drivers could also restart their weekly on-duty limits after having at least 34 consecutive hours off duty.

Public Citizen and other groups claimed that commercial drivers would be less safe if they were allowed to drive more hours per week.

FMCSA has agreed to propose a new rule no later than July 2010. The agency has also agreed to publish a final rule by July 2011.

The court settlement is online here (PDF).

A government labor official says a McDonald’s store manager who died of a brain hemorrhage was a victim of “karoshi” — death by overwork.

The 41-year-old woman had worked more than 80 hours of overtime per month on average for the six months before her death. She suffered from headaches for three weeks before the brain hemorrhage.

She collapsed during a training program and died in the hospital three days later.

The determination that work caused her death makes her dependent family members eligible to receive a public pension.

Japan’s welfare and labor ministry investigates whether deaths are caused by overwork if the employee worked 80 or more hours of overtime for the preceding six months or 100 hours for the previous one month.

The ministry attributes about 150 deaths each year to karoshi, usually through strokes or heart attacks.

Earlier this year, a judge ruled a man’s suicide was due to his working conditions and ordered his employer to pay 100 million yen ($1.2 million) to his surviving relatives.

A judge ruled the company, an agricultural co-operative, failed to fulfill its duty to ensure workplace safety and prevent his death.

Do you think it’s possible to determine if an employee’s stroke or heart attack was caused by working too many hours? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

Imagine this: Two of your employees who work together both get little sleep before performing a safety-sensitive task. Then, the two are involved in an incident that kills 50 people.

A major focus of the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) investigation into the crash of Continental Connection Flight 3407 on Feb. 12 has been on whether the captain and co-pilot were fatigued.

Co-pilot Rebecca Shaw lived with her parents near Seattle and commuted across the country to her job. The night before the accident, Shaw flew overnight from Seattle and changed planes in Memphis before reporting for the early morning flight out of Newark, NJ.

It’s unclear whether Captain Marvin Renslow slept the night before the trip. He was in the middle of a two-day assignment. The night before, he logged into a computer in a crew room, according to NTSB documents.

The crash killed all 49 people on the plane and one person on the ground.

The problem of fatigued employees isn’t limited to pilots. Fatigue costs U.S. employers $136 billion annually in health-related costs and lost worker productivity — not to mention potential lawsuits in cases involving serious injury or death.

What can be done?

You can’t follow your employees home to tuck them into bed at night. Most of the responsibility for being alert at work falls on employees themselves.

However, there are some tips you can give workers and some things you can do to improve alertness. Among the things workers can do:

• Set regular hours for sleeping. The average adult needs eight hours a night, but some require up to 10.
• Avoid caffeine three to five hours before going to bed.
• Naps can help if they’re less than an hour or longer than 90 minutes. That way, workers are less likely to wake up during deep sleep.
• Develop overall good health habits such as daily physical activity and a balanced diet.

For companies with night or long shifts, bright light and cooler temperatures enhance alertness. If possible, schedule the most tedious tasks early in a shift. Moderate physical activity during breaks, such as taking a walk, helps, too.

Employees should have at least ten hours between work shifts.

Have you taken steps to encourage workers in safety-sensitive positions to get proper rest? Let us know about what you’ve done, or leave us a comment on this story, in the box below.

John Keenan crashed his car into another driven by Laurie Riley. Her husband, Gregory, was a passenger.

While her husband’s injuries were minor, Laurie suffered knee and pelvis injuries that left her unable to work.

The Rileys claim Keenan’s long work shifts at Glen Habina & Sons, Inc., were partially to blame for the accident.

Keenan usually worked eight-to-nine hour days as a vehicle driver. But sometimes, after he completed his driving shift, he worked several more hours repairing vehicles.

On the day of the accident, Keenan worked his regular shift but didn’t work any extra hours repairing vehicles.

After work, he went to at least one bar. After the accident, his blood-alcohol level was measured at .178. At trial, an expert estimated that Keenan had consumed 13 12-ounce beers before the accident.

The Rileys claimed the combination of work fatigue and alcohol consumption caused the crash and sought to hold two bars and his employer responsible.

Good news for employers: A jury and then a state appeals court both ruled sensibly. They found that the alcohol consumption was a factor in the crash, but not work fatigue because on the day of the crash he hadn’t worked long hours.

The appeals court noted other courts have found employers liable when their employees cause auto accidents after required long work shifts.

But the court said that wasn’t the case here. Keenan worked only nine hours on the day in question, and he had a sufficient rest period — at least 13.5 hours — before his previous shift.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) analyzed data from the Georgia Study of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, in which 6,530 randomly selected adults were interviewed. Sixteen percent of Georgia’s residents experience persistent problems staying awake during the day. However, only 10% of the people in the study reported having been diagnosed with a sleep disorder.

The study also found:

• 35% wake up in the morning feeling unrefreshed
• 31% can’t sleep through the night, and
• 25% complain they have problems falling asleep.

Study author, Michael Decker, notes people who don’t get enough sleep, or have poor quality sleep, present hazards in their jobs and on the roads.

His suggestion: Educate workers about the symptoms of sleep disorders and prompt them to seek appropriate medical care.

The CDC has a new Web site with information about sleep disorders. The study can be found online here.

Participants worked 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shifts. Subjects worked three nights, had two days off, and then worked four more nights. Their sleep schedule:

• 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. after the first two night shifts
• 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. after the third night shift
• 3 a.m. to 12 noon on the two days off, and
• 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. after the final four night shifts.

Participants also:

• were exposed to five, 15-minute, intermittent bright light pulses each night shift
• wore dark sunglasses when outside, and
• received outdoor afternoon light exposure.

Workers who followed this regimen had increased performance and alertness during nights shifts and were able to work nights while achieving more normal daytime schedules on their days off compared to control subjects.

Conventional wisdom for night workers has been to maintain the same sleep schedule on days off as on work days. However, this meant they couldn’t be awake during normal daytime hours and enjoy their days off.

The study was conducted by Rush University Medical Center and appears in the December issue of the journal SLEEP.

The new Pennsylvania law ensures that nurses and other caregivers won’t be forced to work double shifts, according to the Philadelphia Daily News.

A University of Pennsylvania study shows the risk of medical error was as much as three times higher when a nurse worked a shift of 12.5 hours or longer.

A survey by the Pennsylvania Department of Health showed 13.6% of the state’s registered nurses had experienced mandatory OT in the two weeks before taking the survey.

The law gives healthcare facilities time to hire more nurses. The mandatory OT ban doesn’t go into effect until July 1, 2009.

How does your company balance the need for employees to put in OT and the added safety risks of fatigue? Let us know in the Comments Box below.