One good reason why

This sort of incident has very little to do with having a break every 2 hours. I would suggest that at that time of the morning the driver may have suffered too much fatigue and a 2 hour break would have made little difference.

It is the foolish and selfish belief that people have about jumping in a car and driving enormous distances in the middle of then night when they are normally asleep especially when they usually only drive 60 minutes a day to and from work.

Long weekends and school holidays are famous for these types of accidents because leaving on your holiday after a long day at work is much better than getting there a day late or not if you die on the way due to fatigue.

I now know why I park a fair way into the parking bays.

Kev

I hear you all, i drive all night after work, but unlike the majority i do now my own limits and very aware if my body says sleep i sleep on the side of road, and not worried if i arrived two days late. If the Fiance is in the car she drives and we take turns but i watch her like a hawk!!!! I'm the professional driver out of both of us, but she is the better driver!!!

So be safe not sorry????

Good point Doug.

Other thing I am aware of is conditioning.

Most professional and semi-professional drivers get into a routine and know their limits, they get conditioned to driving longer distances.

Every one else thinks if the professional drivers can drive long distances, any one can. It is not that easy.

Jeez, he wouldn't've known much about that.

Who knows , he might have been on his way home after a late night out.

When i was driving for a living it was nothing to do 10 or 12 hours behind the wheel.

Since i've given that up about 6 is my limit before the signs of fatigue start kicking in

Good advice

In my opinion suggestions about “power nap” (i.e. have a short sleep of 15 min or so) is *ABSOLUTELY* ridiculous. Once one get relaxed and especially put some food in stomach it became very difficult to concentrate again, as least for some time. Having 2 hours break in long distance driving even more silly – in this way you would drive 3 days from Melbourne to Sydney. As far as my experience goes driver does not get tired because of driving itself, but rather eyes became tired from continuous concentration. Thus only one remedy remains – stay less on the road. Thus speed is key issue – faster speed is *SAFER* here, because it means less time behind the wheels. And while it is obvious that heaps of our freeway with two lines only cannot be “speed-up”, I truly can not understand why freeways like Hume when we have divided two lines (or even more) each way road cannot be driven at say 150 km/hr. FYI all Europe does this. When I was in NT (times when that have no speed limit) I have discovered that most comfortable speed about 160-170 km/hr.
My thought came from my personal experience – I have drove from Melbourne to Gold Coast (1870km) and back 5 times, and all of them was done in one hit with only one break for more then 10 min in middle of the day for light lunch when we stay for 20-40 min. And once I was only driver in both ways. My advise for those who like to repeat this is simple – have *PLENTY* of sleep day before, do not drive immediately after work and do not eat anything heavy during trip.
Cheers.