Driver Fatigue Alarms – Driver Fatigue & Fatigue Management

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) November 16, 2011 -- It is very likely that in the past you have been behind the wheel and you’ve felt extremely tired at some point. This is a massive risk to your safety and to your passengers and family. You could be falling into a microsleep. A microsleep is an episode of sleep which may last for a fraction of a second or up to 30 seconds. A lot of the time, it is the result of sleep deprivation, mental fatigue, depression, sleep apnea, hypoxia, narcolepsy, or hypersomnia. For the sleep-deprived, microsleeping can happen at any time, usually without any warning.

Microsleeps (or microsleep episodes) become very dangerous when they happen in situations which require continuous alertness, such as driving a motor vehicle or working with heavy machinery. People who experience microsleeps usually are unaware that they have one. They instead think that they have been awake the whole time or they have temporarily lost focus.

When experiencing microsleeps while driving an automotive vehicle, from the perspective of the driver, he/she drives a car, and then suddenly realises that a few seconds have passed by unnoticed. It is not obvious to the driver that he/she was asleep during those missing seconds, even though this is in fact what happened. The sleeping driver is at very high risk for having an accident during a microsleep episode.

There is no much agreement on how best to identify microsleep episodes. Some experts define microsleep according to behavioural criteria (head nods, drooping eyelids, etc.), while others rely on EEG markers. One study at the University of Iowa defined EEG-monitored microsleeps in driving simulation as "a 3–14 second episode during which 4–7 Hz (theta) activity replaced the waking 8–13 Hz (alpha) background rhythm."

In order to avoid microsleeps, a new and innovative product has been made to avoid catastrophe. It is called the ‘driver fatigue alarm’; a warning system when you are about to doze off! As your head tilts forwards into a life threatening microsleep episode, you will be warned and the deadly micro- sleep will be avoided.

Many accidents and catastrophes have resulted from microsleep episodes in these circumstances. For example, a microsleep episode is claimed to have been one factor that contributed to the Waterfall train disaster in New South Wales Australia, in 2003; the driver had a heart attack and the guard who should have reacted to the train's increasing speed is said by his defender to have microslept, which in turn caused him to be held irresponsible for the accident.

For more detail visit :- http://www.driverfatiguealarm.com.au

driver fatigue     Fatigue Management