TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2021//
TI  - The impact of 7-hour and 11-hour rest breaks between shifts on heavy vehicle truck drivers' sleep, alertness and naturalistic driving performance
JO  - Accident analysis and prevention
A1  - Cori, Jennifer M.
A1  - Downey, Luke A.
A1  - Sletten, Tracey L.
A1  - Beatty, Caroline J.
A1  - Shiferaw, Brook A.
A1  - Soleimanloo, Shamsi Shekari
A1  - Turner, Sophie
A1  - Naqvi, Aqsa
A1  - Barnes, Maree
A1  - Kuo, Jonny
A1  - Lenné, Michael G.
A1  - Anderson, Clare
A1  - Tucker, Andrew J.
A1  - Wolkow, Alexander P.
A1  - Clark, Anna
A1  - Rajaratnam, Shantha M. W.
A1  - Howard, Mark E.
SP  - e106224
EP  - e106224
VL  - 159
IS  - 
N2  - BACKGROUND: An inadequate rest break between shifts may contribute to driver sleepiness. This study assessed whether extending the major rest break between shifts from 7-hours (Australian industry standard) to 11-hours, improved drivers' sleep, alertness and naturalistic driving performance. <br><br>METHODS: 17 heavy vehicle drivers (16 male) were recruited to complete two conditions. Each condition comprised two 13-hour shifts, separated by either a 7- or 11-hour rest break. The initial 13-hour shift was the drivers' regular work. The rest break and following 13-hour shift were simulated. The simulated shift included 5-hours of naturalistic driving with measures of subjective sleepiness, physiological alertness (ocular and electroencephalogram) and performance (steering and lane departures). <br><br>RESULTS: 13 drivers provided useable data. Total sleep during the rest break was greater in the 11-hour than the 7-hour condition (median hours [25(th) to 75(th) percentile] 6.59 [6.23, 7.23] vs. 5.07 [4.46, 5.38], p = 0.008). During the simulated shift subjective sleepiness was marginally better for the 11-hour condition (mean Karolinska Sleepiness Scale [95(th) CI] = 4.52 [3.98, 5.07] vs. 5.12 [4.56, 5.68], p = 0.009). During the drive, ocular and vehicle metrics were improved for the 11-hour condition (p<0.05). Contrary to expectations, mean lane departures p/hour were increased during the 11-hour condition (1.34 [-0.38,3.07] vs. 0.63 [-0.2,1.47], p = 0.027). <br><br>CONCLUSIONS: Extending the major rest between shifts substantially increases sleep duration and has a modest positive impact on driver alertness and performance. Future work should replicate the study in a larger sample size to improve generalisability and assess the impact of consecutive 7-hour major rest breaks.<p />  <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 0001-4575
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2021.106224
ID  - ref1
ER  -