Highly-caffeinated drinks and listening to loud music are only slightly effective in dealing with driver fatigue. But one piece of research shows that the attitudes of employers can influence how well drivers deal with fatigue, according to Fleet News.

One piece of research in the U.K. has found that fewer near misses occurred when drivers exhibited lower levels of work-related stress or worked for organizations with a high awareness of driver safety-related issues.

Research has shown that collisions due to fatigue are most likely to occur at night between midnight and 6 a.m. and at after lunch in the mid-afternoon. A sensible risk management action would therefore be to arrange work patterns so that no business driving was required in the early hours and that drivers were mandated to take a break during the afternoon period.

Although this is hard to police in the real world, the research makes clear that the risk of having a crash can be reduced if driver safety is taken seriously by the employer and employee. That involves having policies and procedures in place to identify likely risk scenarios.