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Final report on the portable computerized assessments of sleepy drivers in operational environments.

File Language:
English


Details

  • Creators:
  • Corporate Creators:
    University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics. Dept. of Neurology
  • Corporate Contributors:
    United States. Federal Highway Administration
  • Subject/TRT Terms:
  • Publication/ Report Number:
    SPR 90-00-SLDR-010
  • Resource Type:
    Tech Report
  • Geographical Coverage:
    United States
  • Corporate Publisher:
    Iowa. Dept. of Transportation
  • Abstract:
    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.

  • Format:
    PDF
  • Collection(s):
  • Main Document Checksum:
    urn:sha-512:cf40c95ec3d960b1415534f9711ab99527fcc46c110ded6d29e9bd9239f772117f55ecda227d8da7e5b8f606d3c49718b99e627f18ed67e8ef4f38471e6ca743
  • Download URL:
  • File Type:
    Filetype[PDF - 76.54 KB ]
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