A new research project is working to reduce road crashes caused by sleepiness among shift-workers who drive either as part of their work or when commuting.

The work will develop a publicly available online fatigue management tool

The Road Safety Trust has awarded funding to Nottingham Trent University (NTU) to carry out the three-year SleepiEST project, working alongside the National Police Wellbeing Service.

The data generated from the project will be used to estimate and predict motorists’ fatigue levels and the work will develop a publicly available online fatigue management tool.

The research will focus on police officers and other police employees, but the findings will also be applicable to a wide range of shift workers, and those who drive to and from work outside normal working hours.

Ruth Purdie, interim chief executive of the Road Safety Trust, said the project could make a major difference for shift workers, who are at additional risk of driving when fatigued due to the nature of their work.

She added: “Driver fatigue causes hundreds of collisions a year. It is a really serious issue.”

The research is being led by Professor John Groeger and Dr Fran Pilkington-Cheney, psychologists and sleep experts from NTU’s School of Social Sciences.

Dr Pilkington-Cheney said: “Due to various shift patterns and circadian related factors, sleepiness is prevalent within shift working populations, and has the potential to be particularly dangerous when safety-critical tasks are involved.

“Our research aims to explore the risk of sleepiness when driving, both during shifts, but also before and after shifts, as commuting can often be overlooked in terms of risk.”

The project will include data analysis from serving officers via a two-week diary study and online vigilance assessment, which will be combined with other data such as on-board driving telematics, to model the effects of fatigue and sleep patterns.

Using this integrated approach, the project will aim to develop a publicly available online tool to enable the ‘sleepiness risk’ to be estimated.

Professor Groeger, founder of NTU’s Sleep Well Science consultancy, said: “Our approach is going to be a little different, because we will gather the data, develop and test the tool, and assess whether the results are meaningful and useful, all within the same complex work setting.

“The national spread and diversity of the police workforce, officers and other employees, will enable us to incorporate the effects of a broad range of individual differences into the underlying model.”