Detecting sleepiness by Optalert: final report

Many crashes with heavy vehicles can be attributed to driver sleepiness or driving impairment due to sleepiness, and it is important to find methods to predict those situations and counteract this problem. The Optalert fatigue management system claims to be able to detect sleepiness. The aims of this study are to 1. evaluate if Optalert can detect sleepiness equally well as other sleepiness indicators and 2. if the data patterns obtained by Optalert correlates with these other sleepiness indicators. Twelve sleep deprived truck drivers drove for about 90 minutes in an advanced moving base truck simulator. The experimental setup, including the sleep deprivation, was designed so that the drivers should become increasingly sleepier during the trial and the intention was that they should fall asleep during the experiment. In conclusion, the Optalert system is promising and the sleepiness rating provided by the system works at least equally well as the other three sleepiness indicators. There are some practical limitations to the system; there is no reliable threshold which can be used to determine when a driver is getting too sleepy to drive (this is also the case for other available sleepiness indicators), the driver needs to be attached to the vehicle via the spectacle frames and a wire, and the quality of the eye movement recordings often deteriorated when the driver started driving the truck. Moreover, during the experiment the technical reliability was sometimes low.

• Record URL:
  • http://www.vti.se/templates/Report____2797.aspx?reportid=14653
• Corporate Authors:

  Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI)

  Linköping,   Sweden  SE-581 95
• Authors:
  • Ahlstroem, C
  • Andersson, J
  • Anund, A
  • Boerjesson, E
  • Johanssonn, H
  • Johnsson, J
• Publication Date: 2010

Language

• English

Media Info

• Pagination: 27p + appendices
• Serial:
  • Issue Number: 2010-2

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Driver performance; Drivers; Evaluation; Fatigue (Physiological condition); Heavy vehicles; Monitoring
• Uncontrolled Terms: Safe systems (road users)
• ATRI Terms: Driver performance; Evaluation; Heavy vehicle driver; Human fatigue; Monitoring
• Subject Areas: Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01383299
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: ARRB
• Files: ATRI
• Created Date: Aug 22 2012 2:00PM