About 5,600 people are killed each year in the U.S. in crashes involving commercial trucks. Many of these crashes happen when the driver falls asleep at the wheel.
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine examined truck drivers and studied patterns of sleep and fatigue.
The study found that drivers who routinely slept less than five hours a night were likely to fare poorly on tests designed to measure sleepiness, attention and reaction time, and steering ability. Drivers with severe sleep apnea, a medical condition that causes a poor quality of sleep, also were sleepy and had performance impairment.
Allan Pack, MB, ChB, PhD, who headed the study, said the tired truck drivers had impaired performance similar to that of drivers who are legally drunk. "We identified some very impaired people," said Pack, a sleep expert who directs Penn's Center for Sleep and Respiratory Neurobiology.
Nearly five percent of the truckers had severe sleep apnea (a condition in which someone stops breathing often during sleep), and about 13 percent of the drivers got fewer than five hours of sleep a night on a regular basis. "There are daytime neurobehavioral performance impairments that are found commonly in commercial drivers, and these are more likely among those who get an average of five or less hours of sleep a night and those who suffer from severe obstructive sleep apnea," the researchers concluded.
Penn researchers are now suggesting specific steps for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to take to improve safety:
- Develop strategies to identify impaired drivers through objective testing.
- Implement programs to identify and test drivers with severe sleep apnea and monitor that they stick to their treatment.
- Introduce programs to assess and promote longer durations of sleep among commercial drivers.
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