One of the biggest killers on Australian roads is something we all know very well – sleepiness.

It is estimated that between 20 and 30 per cent of fatal crashes on Australia’s roads are due to tired drivers.

In NSW for instance, from 2013 to 2017, more people died in fatigue-related crashes than drink-driving crashes, according to the NSW Centre for Road Safety. Other major causes of road death are speeding and driver distraction.

And most worryingly, fatigue-related crashes are twice as likely to be fatal – largely because drivers who are asleep don’t brake.

Despite the hype, reliable self-driving cars are still many years away so until they become a common reality, policymakers are trying to deal with the ever-present danger of driver drowsiness when humans are behind the wheel.

View photos A road sign on the Bruce Highway south of Mackay warns drowsy drivers to take a break on long stretches of road. Source: Getty More

The National Transport Commission introduced Heavy Vehicle Driver Fatigue Legislation in September 2008 in Queensland, NSW, Victoria and South Australia in order to target long distance truckies, a group most vulnerable to the problem. The requirements include mandated rest periods and record keeping detailing breaks that must be kept for three years.

But the problem is much harder to tackle for regular, non professional, road users.

When drink-driving became outlawed, alcohol-related road deaths were reduced significantly in the following decades. But the effort to tackle the same problem with driver fatigue has been hampered by the difficulty of testing for drowsiness.

Up to 30 per cent of all crashes are due to fatigue

Driving tired equates to a 0.05 blood/alcohol level

Shift workers and truck drivers at risk

This is particularly troubling as there is evidence that sleep deprivation can have similar effects to alcohol consumption on drivers. Studies have found that people driving after being awake 17 to 19 hours perform more poorly than those with a blood/alcohol content of 0.05. While if you’ve been awake for 21 hours, your driving performance is about the same as someone with a 0.15 BAC.

Those who do shift work and drive at hours they might otherwise be sleeping are particularly at risk.

Outside of public education campaigns run by state governments, researchers have worked on developing ways to detect driver drowsiness using technology. For example, in recent years researchers have tried to design glasses which track eyelid movements and measure the length of someone’s blinks as a sign.

In a 2019 paper, Prediction of drowsiness events in night shift workers during morning driving, researchers used a “vehicle monitoring system” to monitor the driver in real time.

It found indicators of driver performance degradation and eyelid measures should be “strongly considered when predicting drowsiness events”.

The study sought to build and evaluate predictive models for drowsiness events and ultimately help inform the development of in-car technology that could be used to alert motorists.

“When people are starting to notice difficulty in keeping their eyes open, they may wind the window down or turn the radio up,” Professor Howard, one of the researchers involved in the study, told the ABC.

“They're actually signs that you're starting to become drowsy and impaired, but people tend to ignore those and don't relate them to having a higher risk of having a crash.”

View photos Technology has been used to assess drowsiness. Source: Getty More