In his latest column, Will working the graveyard shift put you in one sooner? Cecil writes, “Common sense suggests night work is stressful; studies show the risk of on-the-job accidents is 30 percent higher at night.”
That latter statistic may reflect fatigue more than anything else. On our roads, the fatality rate per mile traveled is about three times higher at night. Drilling down into the data further one sees remarkable peaks in risk in the 2 hours after midnight. Eyeballing the graph, it appears that risks can be elevated to 10-20 times that of, say, the middle of the day. Then again, there’s a pronounced weekend effect, indicating that alcohol and young male testosterone also plays a role.
Not that fatigue is especially healthy or enjoyable either.