Driver Fatigue – A Hidden reason behind fatal accidents

Sleep deprivation is a major cause of road accidents. A growing economic and family pressure make driving long distance is part of life in driver’s life. Moreover, growing weekend parties’ culture is also another cause for sleep deprivation and fatigue. Because of that most of the people falling asleep driving on Monday and met their corresponding God's in heaven. A driver fatigue is not only leading him to death, an accident causes many more lives. Think of a situation, when a passenger driver feeling fatigued and driving the vehicle. You can't even imagine the outcome of that situation.

The problem is that it's difficult to identify when a driver going to fall asleep.

The facts about fatigued driving.

-  It's reported that 1 in 30 adults fall asleep in last 30 days. Adults are more likely to meet accident due to fatigue syndrome.

- NHTSA claims that drowsy driving claims 800 death in a year among various 72000 accident. Moreover, 44000 people are seriously affected by accidents.

-  Shift worker has the high probability of met an accident than routine workers.

Who is likely to be fatigued?

Though anyone can be fatigued, it is likely that certain individuals are more likely to get fatigued like

- People who are driving without proper sleep.

- Commercial drivers who drive long distances with strict time deadlines for delivery

- Shift workers, especially night shift staff

- Those with sleep disorders (Sleep Apnea)

- Drivers under medication

Signs of fatigue Driving

- Repeated Yawning

- Blinking Often

- Missing the Way

- Drifting to different lane

- Hitting the sidebar or rumble strip.

Fatigue detection and alarming software:

One of the missing link in our system today is we could not able to detect fatigue early. There is a saying when there is no benchmark you cannot improve on anything. You need a proper benchmark for understanding and improving. Today we are not able to benchmark a drivers sleep patterns. Unless, we find the right benchmarks we will not be able to stop the fatigue accidents. However, there are several steps we have taken in this path.

Electronic anti-sleep alarm is one such example. There are several such devices, which will help the drivers wake up and stop the vehicle. This is very important for the drivers. There is software, which understands the sleeping pattern of the driver. When the driver gets into that mode the device captures it and gives an alarm to the driver so he could stop the vehicle aside. If the driver wants to drive irrespective of the alarm, at least, he could take a bottle of water and have a splash on his face, which could freshen him, up a bit.

We have to develop a system which can prevent the driver proceed with the fatigue and give the feedback at the right time. Based on this feedback the driver, as well as the employer, can take the necessary steps to avoid this one the future.

In essence, Driver Fatigue could be very dangerous as it could lead to accidents. It is best to use Fatigue detection systems and driver alert systems. There are electronic anti-sleep alarms, which can be used to avert any untoward incident.

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