20wake-up%20call%20for%20drowsy%20drivers-20may

The Australian Financial Reviewwww.afr.com l Thursday 20 May 2010 SPECIAL REPORT 7

Vision: a wake­up callfor drowsy drivers

New products come and go in thetrucking and fleet industries but onethat has been attracting attention latelyis a system that detects driverdrowsiness, a major cause of accidents.

Ensuring truck drivers get enough sleep, ormonitoring them so they do not fall asleep at thewheel, has proved very difficult. But oneAustralian company says it has a system that canmonitor driver drowsiness, and it can point tocustomers who say it works.Managing director of Melbourne-basedOptalert, John Prendergast, says the market forthe system, which cost “under $4000” a unit, isstill developing, but it is being rolled out by somemajor users, mainly in the mining industry.The Optalert system, developed by Australianmedical practitioner Murray Johns, involvesdrivers wearing a pair of glasses connected by acable to a system in the vehicle. Clips can beattached to existing spectacles. Using low levels ofinfrared light, the glasses measure movements inthe driver’s eyeball and eyelids to calculate howsleepy a driver is.As soon as that drowsiness index falls below a

certain level, the system gives a loud warning,which shocks the driver back into wakefulness.Optalert is not the only driver drowsiness

monitoring system on the road. Mercedes-Benzincorporates one in its new E-Class model. Thismonitors driver behaviour by sensing changes insteering patterns, braking and acceleration, aswell as time of day and road conditions. Thesystem does not require drivers to wear glasses,but it has not been adapted for trucks.One company claiming considerable successthrough the use of the Optalert system (althoughalso noting successful adoption is more than justtelling drivers to wear the glasses) is WestNetEnergy, which supplies services to the Dampier toBunbury natural gas pipeline.This pipeline stretches over 1600 kilometresand 10 compressor stations – a long drive tomaintain the system and build extensions.Alyson Vinciguerra, manager of health, safetyand environment at WestNet, who spoke on hercompany’s use of the system at the AustralasianFleet Management Association diverse fleetconference in March. She said much of thedriving is on unsealed roads and off the beatentrack, and it was very difficult to manage fatigue,which she separated into two areas: acute andchronic.“Chronic fatigue tends to be associated withsleep and sleep debt,” she said. “Acute fatiguetends to be more associated with all of the thoseother things that are so much harder to control,such as temperature, diet, health conditions andthe monotony of the job and workload.”Looking for a system that warned drivers when

they were getting into an at-risk period, thecompany decided to try Optalert, but simplyinstalling the equipment in the vehicles would nothave been enough.“I believe the key is that we didn’t simply tell

our guys to wear the glasses; there was a wholeeducation program that went along with it,explaining the information that was going to berecorded,” she said.Also, the system was just one part of a number

of other measures, including rosters, workload,wellbeing programs and providing environmentsthat are air-conditioned. One result of all of thishas been a dramatic decline in vehicle incidents.According to a presentation at the conferenceby Optalert executive Hamish Campbell, thesystem calculates a measure of driver alertnessduring a long haul, the score starting from zerowhen the driver is fully awake. Any score up to4.5 is fine but when drivers go past 4.5 theyreceive a first warning, designed to provokealertness.“The results we see from the field show that

95 per cent of the time, when the first warning isgiven, people snap out of it. They either getshocked by the decibels of the noise or they getangry and shout back. Either way it works,” hesaid.Campbell also noted that there was someresistance, with drivers concerned that the systemmight be used to monitor their performance, butonce they realised it would not be used that waythey were more open to it.

A new device promisesto reduce the danger ofdrivers falling asleep atthe wheel, writesMark Lawson.

Photo:CRAIG

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