Special Report: Beyond the Buzz of the Double-Double

Regulators aren’t the only ones looking for ways to prevent fatigue among truck drivers. Behind the frontlines are the engineers who do research about how drivers are affected by fatigue and what can be done to manage it.

One of those researchers is Sesto Vespa, senior development officer for technology applications at Transport Canada. Vespa and his colleagues look at a variety of solutions aimed at helping drivers stay more alert while on duty, and to sleep better during downtime. It’s a complex issue.

“There’s very little technology on the market right now that’s completely satisfactory,” Vespa says. “Our criteria are those technologies which are as unobtrusive and reliable as possible, those that give the least false positives.”

Transport Canada is currently involved in a test of fatigue-monitoring technologies, a jointly funded study with the U.S. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. The trial involves real revenue runs, four different driving schedules, 80 drivers, and more than 200,000 miles of highway driving. Among the test fleets is Challenger Motor Freight in Cambridge, Ont., which is using four devices:

* Actigraphs: Resembling a wristwatch, an actigraph uses the subject’s wrist motion to predict his or her sleep needs. A graduated graph on the watch displays the wearer’s perceived level of alertness at the time — 50%, 86%, what have you. “The watch has a logarithm in it with a timer and an accelerometer,” says Enno Jakobson, vice-president of risk management at Challenger. “It knows that if it’s late at night and my arms are flailing around, I’m not at rest when I should be. It’s going to drop down that percentage.”

* PERCLOS: Aimed at the eyes rather than the wrist, PERCLOS (for “percent eye closure”) mounts on the dash and emits an infrared beam that monitors the droopiness of the driver’s eyelids. If the eyelids droop too much or too frequently, the device sounds an audible alarm.

* Lane-tracking: The lane-tracking system monitors the vehicle’s position between the lines on the road and sounds an alert when the vehicle begins to drift.

* Howard Power Centre Steering System: This is an air-over-hydraulic system that has two cylinders that attach to the tie-rod arm of the truck’s steering system. The cylinders work in opposition to each other, and will keep your wheels straight as the vehicle goes down the road. “The driver can actually regulate the pressure going to the cylinder with a knob, so in the event of high crosswinds, for example, he can increase that pressure to keep going straighter,” Jakobson says. “A trim button allows him to bring those wheels back to centre. So whatever corrections those pistons are making, the driver can bring them back.”

The theory behind the Howard system is that it will reduce the number of minute steering corrections a driver has to make and mitigate some of the mental and physical fatigue of fighting the truck, especially in winds. The manufacturer claims that in the event of a blowout, the device will also keep the vehicle tracking straight — you won’t get a big pull to one side. “We’ve also been told to expect a reduction in tire wear of 30%, since there is less lateral movement of the tires,” Jakobson says.

One device Jakobson says has been well-received by drivers is the XVision thermal imaging system developed and marketed by Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems.

XVision consists of a roof-mounted infrared camera that senses heat sources and produces an image projected onto an in-cab display that sits just above the driver’s line of sight. XVision offers “flip-down” and “flip-up modes,” with images projected onto a laptop-like screen that can be folded down during daytime. The driver sees a real-time, black-and-white image of the road in which warmer objects, such as people or animals, show as bright white, while cooler objects, like bridge abutments, guardrails, or trees, show in darker shades of gray or black. Because the camera is not affected by light, the display image is not susceptible to glare from oncoming headlights.

XVision has been for sale in Canada since December 2001, and will soon be offered in production by Kenworth.

“Our studies found that XVision produced no additional fatigue and no additional driver distraction,” says Andreea Raaber, director of new ventures for Bendix. “It’s an assist-type, passive solution, letting the driver remain in control, and providing exactly the right kind and amount of information upon which to make decisions.

“The studies also showed that giving the driver one second of additional response time reduces 90% of accidents, pointing toward a significant reduction in accident rates.”

And reducing accidents is what matters most to everyone — regulators, researchers, and truckers alike.