Reducing Road Accidents Through Fatigue Detection and Monitoring: A Review

Abstract

Driver fatigue is recognised as a major risk for road safety. Fatigue reduces drivers' ability to react to road and traffic conditions, resulting in potential serious injuries and fatalities. A method of reducing the risk of fatigue related accidents is through monitoring/detecting fatigue changes in drivers. Fatigue is shown to be associated with factors like psychological, physiological and performance based changes in drivers, and these could be used to indicate the occurrence of fatigue. This paper reviews the literature concerned with these measures, and discusses the implications of these measures for road safety as well as their limitations. Research suggests that these measures have the potential to be used in fatigue detection/warning systems. However, further research is needed before such devices could be implemented in vehicles as fatigue countermeasure devices.