Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/893962
26 | Overdrive | October 2017 BODY LANGUAGE The headset worn by driver Bob Stanton might look ordinary, but it incorporates sensors for tracking head motions that could indicate fatigue or distraction. F atigue monitoring technology made its first major commer- cial inroads in mining. Closing a mine for a day or more after a fatal accident can cost the owner millions of dollars, so the return on investment made a lot of sense, says Daniel Bongers, chief technology officer for SmartCap Technologies, the company that evolved out of his early work in fatigue research and mine safety. SmartCap and at least two of its fatigue- monitoring competitors, Seeing Machines and Optalert, have global operations based in Australia, where mining represents a huge part of the country's economy. The initial focus on mining opportunities is one reason fatigue-monitoring vendors have been relatively late to penetrate the U.S. trucking market, Bongers says. That's changing fast. Fleets representing tens of thousands of trucks use camera systems for legal protection and safety reasons. The safety interests increasingly include fatigue monitoring, especially as driver-facing cameras get put into cabs. While adoption of wearable fatigue monitoring systems lags the adoption of road-facing cameras, wearables are making headway as more fleets test the products. Some wearables vendors claim their sys- tems, relative to driver-facing cameras, are less invasive and more suited to predicting fatigue. Some not only rate a driver's alert- ness before starting to drive but also promise hourly forecasts of declining alertness. "I see a lot of systems come and go," says Richard Hanowski, director of the Center for Truck & Bus Safety at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. Many systems based on cameras or other technology look good during testing but fall short in real-world applications, he says. One of the biggest reasons is driver resistance, Hanowski says. "I could abide a device that detects fatigue," says Dave Reid, a company driver for Pride Transport, "but I could not abide any video or audio recording in the cab and wouldn't work with a company that mandated that." "Driver fatigue? How about just ask- ing?" says Michael Wright, an owner-oper- ator leased to Laser Transport. "Or trust Makers of wearable monitors are selling a wide variety of systems to interpret what a driver's body says about fatigue. Like dashcam providers, they see great potential in the trucking industry. BY MAX HEINE WEARABLE DEVICES NEXT MONTH: REGULATIONS