While we are talking about rules concerning fatigue try this story on for size. You will have to forgive me for minor informational mistakes as it has been awhile.
I used to live in Seattle. In the late 1990's ( I believe pretty close to 2000) a ferry boat captain fell asleep at the helm and rammed into the 520 floating bridge that spans Lake Washington causing significant damage. I didn't think too much of it as I know humans are humans and mistakes happen. Upon reading the reports about it afterwards my eyebrows started to raise as a professional pilot. The local media was in an uproar of course trying to assign blame. As I remember, the paper said that the boat captain had been on duty past the federally mandated 12 hour daily maximum and the NTSB had attributed that as a major contributing factor. I don't know jack squat about maritime regulations, but if true what an unbelievable paradox. Here we are, as professional pilots, carting around hundreds of people in three dimensions at 500 kts in all sorts of weather while the boat captain is doing maybe 15 kts in two dimensions in a 100' ship (at best) on a moderately sized landlocked body of water and his duty day limit is more conservative than ours which stands at 16 hours. Does that make sense? It is clear who has some pull in DC.