Diagnostic tools for identifying sleepy drivers in the field.

Details

• Creators:
  Rizzo, Matthew ; Tippin, Jon ; Aksan, Nazan
• Corporate Creators:
  University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics. Dept. of Neurology
• Corporate Contributors:
  United States. Federal Highway Administration
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  • Commercial drivers
  • Truck drivers
  • Sleep deprivation
  • Fatigue (Physiological condition)
  • Apnea
  • Behavior
  • Diagnostic tests
  • Field tests
  • Traffic law enforcement
• Publication/ Report Number:
  RB21-012
• Resource Type:
  Tech Report
• Geographical Coverage:
  United States
• Corporate Publisher:
  Iowa. Dept. of Transportation
• Abstract:
  The overarching goal of this project was to identify and evaluate cognitive and behavioral indices that are sensitive to sleep ; deprivation and may help identify commercial motor vehicle drivers (CMV) who are at-risk for driving in a sleep deprived ; state and may prove useful in field tests administered by officers. To that end, we evaluated indices of driver physiognomy ; (e.g., yawning, droopy eyelids, etc.) and driver behavioral/cognitive state (e.g. distracted driving) and the sensitivity of these ; indices to objective measures of sleep deprivation. The measures of sleep deprivation were sampled on repeated ; occasions over a period of 3.5-months in each of 44 drivers diagnosed with Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) and 22 controls ; (matched for gender, age within 5 years, education within 2 years, and county of residence for rural vs. urban driving). ; Comprehensive analyses showed that specific dimensions of driver physiognomy associated with sleepiness in previous ; research and face-valid composite scores of sleepiness did not: 1) distinguish participants with OSA from matched controls; ; 2) distinguish participants before and after PAP treatment including those who were compliant with their treatment; 3) ; predict levels of sleep deprivation acquired objectively from actigraphy watches, not even among those chronically sleep ; deprived. Those findings are consistent with large individual differences in driver physiognomy. In other words, when ; individuals were sleep deprived as confirmed by actigraphy watch output they did not show consistently reliable behavioral ; markers of being sleep deprived. This finding held whether each driver was compared to him/herself with adequate and ; inadequate sleep, and even among chronically sleep deprived drivers. The scientific evidence from this research study does ; not support the use of driver physiognomy as a valid measure of sleep deprivation or as a basis to judge whether a CMV ; driver is too fatigued to drive, as on the current Fatigued Driving Evaluation Checklist.. Fair and accurate determinations of ; CMV driver sleepiness in the field will likely require further research on alternative strategies that make use of a ; combination of information sources besides driver physiognomy, including work logs, actigraphy, in vehicle data recordings, ; GPS data on vehicle use, and performance tests.
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• Format:
  PDF
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/26300/dot_26300_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 65.86 KB]
• Collection(s):
  US Transportation Collection
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:760164310dab4ad525499249fc62f93de103e77080ce759cee7bf4968b0479dfd40fd0a53561564e9bc7cd39e74c9b97789be8abfc801b06e34f527fcff4d14d