Impact of Fatigue and Sleepiness on the Incidence of Occupational Accidents in the Preparation, Construction and Manufacture of the tire Industry

The research focused on analyzing the influence of long working hours on safety in the tire industry, especially in preparation and manufacturing areas. Rather than assuming fatigue as a given problem, the objective was to understand how physical and mental exhaustion relate to workplace mistakes and accidents, based on workers' real experiences. A total of 160 employees, all working shifts longer than 10 hours, participated by completing two standard questionnaires: the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale and the Chalder Fatigue Scale. To bring out that larger context, some follow-up interviews were conducted as well, in which workers described of fatigue in their own terms. Accident records from the year before were thrown into the mix, and all of it was run through SPSS. The findings were not surprising, but they were dramatic nonetheless: increased levels of fatigue were highly correlated with an increase in errors, who were fatigued respiratory rate. The results also suggested that fatigue is one of the major contributors to human error and causing workplace accidents in the organizations with high-intensity work and long and hard workdays. It is a common assumption that longer working hours may negatively affect both the physical and mental ability of workers.