A new research project is aiming to reduce road crashes caused by sleepiness through monitoring shift workers who drive, either as part of their jobs or to and from work.
The Road Safety Trust has awarded Nottingham Trent University (NTU) funding to carry out the three-year SleepiEST project, working alongside the National Police Wellbeing Service.
The research will focus on police officers and other police employees. However, the findings will be applicable to a wide range of shift workers and people who drive to and from work outside normal working hours and the project will result in a publicly available online fatigue management tool.
The project is being led by psychologists and sleep experts Professor John Groeger and Dr Fran Pilkington-Cheney from NTU.
Dr Pilkington-Cheney said: ‘Our research aims to explore the risk of sleepiness when driving, both during shifts, but also before and after shifts, as commuting can often be overlooked in terms of risk.’
Data collection will occur in three phases. The project team will first conduct a large, nationwide survey of police officers and employees to collect information on sleep, fatigue, shift patterns and driving behaviour.
The team will then collect information from officers in a two week diary study and online vigilance assessment, before combining this with other data such as on-board telematics, to model effects of fatigue and sleep patterns.
This integrated approach will aim to develop a publicly available online tool to enable the ‘sleepiness risk’ to be estimated.
Professor Groeger said: ‘Our approach is going to be a little different, because, we will gather the data, develop and test the tool, and assess whether the results are meaningful and useful, all within the same complex work setting.
‘The national spread and diversity of the police workforce, officers and other employees, will enable us to incorporate the effects of a broad range of individual differences into the underlying model.'
Ruth Purdie OBE, interim chief executive of The Road Safety Trust, said: ‘Driver fatigue causes hundreds of collisions a year. It is a really serious issue.
‘This project can make a significant difference for shift workers, who by the very nature of their work, are at additional risk of driving when fatigued.'
