Effects of Sleep Schedules on Commercial Motor Vehicle Driver Performance

Abstract

The project entitled "Effects of Sleep Schedules on Commercial Motor Vehicle Driver Performance" was comprised of two studies: a field study and a laboratory study. In the field study, wrist actigraphy was used to determine amounts of sleep in long-versus short-haul commercial motor vehicle (CMV) drivers over 20 consecutive days, continuously, during and outside the work shift. Results from this study revealed the extent to which inadequate sleep constitutes a potential problem for these two subpopulations of CMV drivers. In the laboratory study, the effects of 3, 5, 7, and 9 hours of nightly time in bed (TIB) on subsequent performance (on a variety of psychomotor tasks, including simulated driving), were measured across 7 consecutive days in CMV drivers. Results from this study were used to optimize the parameters of the Walter Reed Sleep Performance Model (SPM). The SPM, along with a sleep scoring algorithm, has been integrated into the current version of the Sleep Watch Actigraph (SWA), a wrist-worn device for management of sleep and performance in the operational environment.