Fellowship for driver fatigue research

15 September 2010

A Monash University PhD student has won a prestigious Victoria Fellowship for her research into driver fatigue.

Suzanne Ftouni, a PhD student in the School of Psychology and Psychiatry is looking at ways to tackle the problem, which particularly affects night shift workers.

Ms Ftouni said there was a lack of practical and objective methods of monitoring drowsiness levels while driving.

Driver fatigue is regarded as the largest identifiable and preventable cause of transport accidents, surpassing that of alcohol and drug related incidents.

National Transport Commission research recently published by Vic Roads indicates that up to 30 per cent of truck fatalities and 52 per cent of major crash insurance claims are related to drowsy drivers.

The research also indicates that 28 per cent of heavy vehicle licence holders reported having fallen asleep while driving.

Ms Ftouni is one of six young Victorian scientists to win a prestigious Victoria Fellowship.

She received the Fellowship on Monday at a gala function at Government House from the Governor of Victoria, Professor David de Kretser.

The Victoria Fellowships, each worth $18,000, were first awarded by the Victorian Government in 1998 to recognise young researchers with leadership potential and to enhance their future careers, while developing new ideas that could offer commercial benefit to Victoria.

Ms Ftouni will travel to the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, USA, to use their state-of- the-art sleep laboratory to run a highly controlled and in-depth analysis of Optalert, a Melbourne-based innovation developed as an unobtrusive method to monitor drowsiness while driving.

Developed by Melbourne sleep expert Dr Murray Johns, Optalert is a device that looks like a normal pair of sunglasses but has infrared transmitters fitted inside the frame to measure a range of eye movements and feed them into a small computer to calculate the driver's level of drowsiness. At high levels of drowsiness, the system sounds an alarm to warn the driver.

Monash University Accident Research Centre has undertaken some testing of the device.

Ms Ftouni's research will assess Optalert in a controlled environment against other vigilance methods, including electroencephalogram (EEG), the current gold standard.

Based on Ms Ftouni's findings, the innovative technology could be used in all modes of transport as a preventative measure against drowsy driving.

A video about Suzanne Ftouni is available on Youtube.