Falling asleep at the wheel is easier than you think

|by

Fatigued workers could be micro-sleeping, and causing major accidents.

Scientists have indicated that fatigued drivers are capable of falling asleep behind the wheel for seconds at a time without evening knowing it. A few seconds might not seem like a long time, but in a fast moving vehicle or dangerous piece of equipment, it’s enough for something serious to happen.

ABC news put this study to the test in a recent experiment under supervision of the Liberty Mutual Research Institute, where this phenomenon called ‘micro sleep’ is studied. Reporter, Ron Claiborne, deprived himself of sleep and then attempted to operate a vehicle. The results were both surprising and alarming – have a watch:

 

 

In the video, Ron admits to falling asleep ‘a couple of times’ and decides to end the experiment. Luckily for Ron, he was driving on a closed and supervised course because the experiment data actually showed that he had fallen asleep not twice, but twenty-two times. Workers in 24/7 operations aren’t usually supervised by a team of scientists while on the job, so what would falling asleep twenty-two times mean to someone operating heavy equipment or about to drive themselves home after finishing a long shift?

RELATED POSTS

Title of blog, Fatigue Science logo and mining equipment
, ,

Circadian Factors in Workforce Performance

An article published in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews takes a comprehensive look at the science behind workplace fatigue. In the article, “Fatigue and its Management in the Workplace,” the authors look at the biological causes of fatigue, how the modern workplace affects these biological factors, and some of the effective ways to manage fatigue.
Mining truck at a mining site.
,

Introducing the Fatigue Science 90-Day Pilot Program

When introducing a new initiative into a workforce, it’s important to prepare for feedback, change management, and policy development. With that in mind, Fatigue Science provides a 90-day Pilot Program to help implement Readi™ Enterprise Suite as part of your company’s approach to fatigue risk management.

Fatigue Science Customer Experience: Growing Sustainable Proven Value for Our Customers

It’s the role of the Customer Experience team at Fatigue Science to understand the needs of our enterprise customers and to work with them to achieve their goals.  Our customers want access to objective and actionable data for managing daily fatigue risks, as well as understanding the long term relationship between sleep and fatigue and their impact on their operations. The Customer Experience team not only helps customers roll out this technology site-wide, or company-wide, but we also help customize their data to make it configurable for their specific needs and requirements, and support them in achieving long-term health and safety benefits for their work force.