Truck drivers are entering the domain of professional athletes to help road safety researchers predict – and stop – crashes caused by fatigue.
As part of a novel research trial, drivers from Bingo Industries and Toll Group are putting on biometric vests to help Griffith University researchers investigate precisely how fatigue affects the way they drive.
The special vests — so-called Hexoskin vests — normally the garb of elite athletes, monitor their performance, health, sleep and activities. The Hexoskin vests will measure physical responses such as heart rate and breathing rate while driving or resting and help researchers predict, and prevent, road accidents caused by fatigue.
“Fatigue is also known as a silent killer. It impairs decision making, affects performance, slows reaction times and reduces the ability to control emotions,” the National Road Safety Partnership Program said on its website.
“In 2020, 8 percent of all truck large losses in Australia were caused by fatigue,” NRSPP said in a flyer for one of its Heavy Vehicle Toolbox Talks, one that focusses on fatigue management.
“They need more drivers,” Jerome Carslake, program director at NRSPP, which is a unit of Monash University Accident Research Centre, said in a callout on LinkedIn for the Griffith Uni’s fatigue study.
Darren Wishart, Director of Work and Organisational Resilience Centre and one of the Griffith University researchers, said they are looking for as many as 250 volunteers, including from large government and corporate fleets.
“Consider as an employer you will come to understand how the pressures on the road system – picture other road users cutting off trucks and buses – and how that may impact on safe driving. Another angle could be fatigue or pressure or delays in getting to a destination?” said Wishart.
“The other is what happens on site and how this blows back into safe driving. There are so many factors which can impact on driving which is why we focus on a systems-based approach,” said Wishart, adding, “The beauty of this project, we can peep inside the drivers and see how all of these other factors correlate with safe driving. “
The study is not confined to heavy vehicle drivers. Anyone who has driving as the main part of employment is invited to register. To participate means drivers wear a biometric vest (which monitors heart and breath rates) at work for five days, and complete surveys.
Physical and psychological research data collected will be overlaid with information from in-vehicle monitoring technologies to highlight indicators of fatigue, which slows brain function and reactions and contributes to up to half of road crashes.
The study is funded by the Road Safety Innovation Fund, a federal fund for projects designed to reduce harm and trauma-related crashes.
