Sleep Deprivation In Driving And Driving

Sleep is a natural human and non-human state of mind, characterised by changes in neural activity (Nihgov, 2015). Indeed, sleep is believed to play a crucial role in performance; nonetheless, research on the importance and functions of sleeping is still ongoing (Brown et al., 2012). For instance, sleep deprivation is considered to mostly harm attention-related task performance, such as driving (Loft and Cameron, 2014). In fact, it is believed that 10-13% of crashes are due to drowsy driving or feeling sleepy when driving (Drowsydriving.org, 2015). What is more alarming is that detecting sleepiness in a driver is not possible because no test exists to assess drowsiness (Drowsydriving.org, 2015). Therefore, the main issue to be analysed in this

Evidence for this argument can be seen in the research performed by Williamson & Feyer (2000), which study the relative impairment of sleep deprivation in cognitive and motor performance. They found that fatigue caused by sleep deprivation plays an important role when driving. In fact, it can even compromise the accuracy and safety needed in the road. Furthermore, Rogé, Basheer, Pébayle, Hannachi & Muzet (2003) advocate that sleep deprivation can increase the levels of drowsiness and fatigue, which can cause deficiency when detecting signals or responding to stimulus in a driving simulator. Sleep is an important part of human health, which can help improve our ability to perform tasks. It can also be detrimental to both body and mind. It cannot only cause damage to us but to others. Therefore the effects of sleep play an important role when realizing to what extent it can damage performance and become a risk to

This research also intended to find at what level sleep depravation was equivalent to the minimum amount of alcohol concentration considered as hazardous. Moreover, participants were females and males from 30 to 49 years old who belonged to a road transportation company or the army. Participants were measured on seven different tests, which were previously chosen by their sensitivity to the effects of fatigue. The IV presented was fatigue at two different levels, caused by alcohol and lack of sleep. While the DV measured was the performance in the seven fatigue sensitive tests. Researcher operationalized the DV by measuring the scores obtained in the different tasks. In addition, participants had to rate how fatigue and alert they were. Results showed that after 17-19 hors with sleep deprivation, performance scores decreased to equal or lower than a person with the minimum level of alcohol considered hazardous. Furthermore, researchers found that sleep depravation also decreases the alertness of participants, which is an important skill to have when