Big Event May 202020 Jul 2019 16:44
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https://www.microliseconference.com/agenda/
Driver fatigue resulting from reduced or compromised sleep is implicated to be a causal factor in up to 20% of road traffic crashes. Identifying that a vehicle operator is fatigued remains the topic of much on-going research and development. In-cab technologies have been used successfully to detect risky behaviours in real time, and to provide feedback to drivers for behaviours such as speeding and seat-belt usage. It has until now been difficult to show similar results for fatigue, and to measure the incidence of fatigue events, due to the difficulty in detecting fatigue events in real time and in real world conditions.
Professor Mike Lenné, Chief Scientific Officer, Human Factors at Seeing Machines, in conjunction with Michael Fitzharris from the Monash University Accident Research Centre conducted a study. It aimed at establishing the incidence of fatigue events in long-haul truck driving and to examine whether the provision of in-cab fatigue alerts to the driver, in combination with real time event feedback to the driver’s employer, had an impact on the incidence of fatigue events.
Ultimately, the paper has shown that making a driver aware of their fatigue state via in-cab feedback is a crucial first step to reducing driver fatigue. Clearly, real-time fatigue data will likely be most effective when implemented as one component of a broader safety risk management system as was done with the long-haul fleets in this study. It is important to further explore each company’s safety culture and maturity with respect to safety management systems to further tease apart the influence of the direct device warnings to the driver from the influence of company involvement in managing fatigue events.
A strength of the paper is the availability and use of continuous monitoring of driver behaviour and driver state data, as well as the external verification of fatigue events. A dataset of the type used in this research can provide unique insights into driver state not otherwise possible. For practitioners and regulators, this type of information can provide an important evidence base to inform policy discussions around working hours and timing, and durations of rest breaks, within the context of both company and regulatory-level management systems.
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