Excessive daytime sleepiness underpins a large number of the reported motor vehicle crashes. Fair and accurate field measures are needed to identify at-risk drivers who have been identified as potentially driving in a sleep deprived state on the basis of erratic driving behavior. The purpose of this research study was to evaluate a set of cognitive tests that can assist Motor Vehicle Enforcement Officers on duty in identifying drivers who may be engaged in sleep impaired driving. Currently no gold standard test exists to judge sleepiness in the field. Previous research has shown that Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT) is sensitive to sleep deprivation. The first goal of the current study was to evaluate whether computerized tests of attention and memory, more brief than PVT, would be as sensitive to sleepiness effects. The second goal of the study was to evaluate whether objective and subjective indices of acute and cumulative sleepiness predicted cognitive performance. Findings showed that sleepiness effects were detected in three out of six tasks. Furthermore, PVT was the only task that showed a consistent slowing of both best, i.e. minimum, and typical responses, median RT due to sleepiness. However, PVT failed to show significant associations with objective measures of sleep deprivation (number of hours awake). The findings indicate that sleepiness tests in the field have significant limitations. The findings clearly show that it will not be possible to set absolute performance thresholds to identify sleep-impaired drivers based on cognitive performance on any test. Cooperation with industry to adjust work and rest cycles, and incentives to comply with those regulations will be critical components of a broad policy to prevent sleepy truck drivers from getting on the road.


    Access

    Access via TIB

    Check availability in my library


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    Portable Computerized Assessments of Sleepy Drivers in Operational Environments


    Contributors:
    M. Rizzo (author) / J. Tippin (author) / N. Aksan (author)

    Publication date :

    2011


    Size :

    25 pages


    Type of media :

    Report


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English




    SYSTEM WILL WARN SLEEPY DRIVERS

    British Library Online Contents | 2001


    THE DRIVER'S ALGORITHM TO PREVENT A SLEEPY DRIVERS

    YUN JAE BEEN | European Patent Office | 2016

    Free access

    Diagnostic Tools for Identifying Sleepy Drivers in the Field

    M. Rizzo / J. Tippin / N. Aksan | NTIS | 2013


    Legally `safe' blood alcohol concentrations exacerbate performance impairment in sleepy drivers

    Horne, J. A. / Reyner, L. A. / Barrett, P. R. et al. | British Library Conference Proceedings | 2003


    Road accidents caused by sleepy drivers: Update of a Norwegian survey

    Phillips, Ross Owen / Sagberg, Fridulv | Elsevier | 2012