In New Zealand, the Land Transport Safety Authority attributes 8 per cent of fatal crashes and 5 per cent of injury crashes to fatigue. Sleep related accidents are 3 times more likely to result in injury or death than other road accidents. Some years ago Ford Motor Cars together with the University of Aberdeen and Loughborough developed a system to monitoring driver alertness. It is a tiny computer linked to cameras which monitors the drivers blink rate thought to be a reliable detector of alertness. The results suggest that it is not just long distance drivers covering hundreds of miles that are affected by tiredness.
Sleepy drivers are everywhere.
They also conducted some telling experiments on drivers. One group of drivers were kept awake for 24 hours before driving a simulator for 40 minutes. In the experiment during the first week of trials nobody stayed fully awake until the end, one man fell asleep within five minutes, woke 40 minutes later and started to drive again. Afterwards he was convinced he hadn t fallen asleep. There is little direct legislation on the organisation of shiftwork or issues pertaining to sleep loss and fatigue.