The problem of distracted driving hasn't been resolved but with all the attention it has received — social, regulatory and technical — it is being addressed.
Next in line for official scrutiny is drowsy driving.
Earlier this week, Mark Rosekind, head of the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), announced that his agency will focus on ways to boost awareness of the dangers of drowsy driving and crack down on the behaviour.
Rosekind is an internationally recognized expert on human fatigue. Before being appointed to his current position by President Obama last December, he was a member of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, where he advanced that agency’s goals on substance-impaired driving, fatigue and other related issues.
Before that, he founded Alertness Solutions, a scientific consulting firm that specialized in fatigue management. So it's a subject that’s important to him.
It’s also a significant safety issue. Various studies have equated the dangers of driving while drowsy with those of driving while impaired by alcohol.
In a 2011 study, NHTSA found that drowsy driving was involved in about one of every 40 fatal crashes in the U.S. from 2005 through 2009 — or about 1,000 deaths per year. At least 72,000 injury or property damage collisions were said to be related to drowsiness over that time.
Those figures may dramatically understate the problem. According to the Biomechanics Institute of Valencia (IBV) in Spain, fatigue is a contributing factor in 8 percent of traffic accidents in the European Union.
A 2014 study completed by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety in spiked the ratio of drowsy drivers to fatal America crashes far higher, at 21 per cent of fatal crashes.
Drivers themselves are often the victims who die in single-car crashes. According to the same AAA Foundation study, more than one-third of drivers report having fallen asleep behind the wheel at some point in their lives, and more than one in 10 has fallen asleep while driving during the past year.
One of the challenges in determining the true extent of the problem is the absence of any definitive way to measure for drowsiness after the fact, unlike alcohol- or drug-related crashes. Researchers can confirm that sleep-related crashes often occur during late night/early morning — or mid-afternoon — and they are likely to be serious, involving a single vehicle and driver on a high-speed road. Men aged 16 to 29 are considered most at risk.
Rosekind said NHTSA is going to begin developing and testing public awareness campaign techniques about the drowsy driving peril. He also noted that the agency needs better data to measure the problem, and will consider better legal and enforcement strategies.
“We’re going to develop strategies specifically targeting populations especially vulnerable to drowsy driving,” he said. “And we’re going to comprehensively examine the role that driver aids, in the car and outside of it, can play.”
Several automakers have already addressed the issue, both indirectly and directly, with driver aids or Attention Assist systems.
The indirect approach is through such technological improvements as lane departure warning and control and lane keeping, both now widely available. While not specifically aimed at drowsy driving, those systems will provide an alert and in some cases take corrective action.
A more direct approach involves camera-based devices to monitor the driver’s appearance or behaviour and warn if sleepiness is evident. Some such systems monitor and analyze either eye movement or facial expressions to determine the driver’s state or mood. Several automakers, including Jaguar Land Rover and Lexus, already employ or are working on such systems.
Volvo is experimenting with a facial recognition system that uses infrared LEDs and sensors to monitor the driver’s face and head position.
BMW, Ford and Mercedes-Benz already offer attention assist systems that monitor multiple inputs, including steering, brake and accelerator movements to determine if drivers are falling asleep and warn them to take a break if they are.
Still in the research stage is a concept called HARKEN, developed by IBV, that uses sensors embedded in the driver’s seatbelt and seat cover to monitor cardiac and respiratory rhythms.
Whatever form it takes, chances are that some form of drowsiness monitor will become common in the not-too-distant future.