TORONTO, Monday, January 14, 2019– As personal life style and work demands are leading to increased sleep deprivation, driving drowsy has become a dangerous reality. According to surveys taken by the Traffic Injury Research Foundation (TIRF), 18.5% of participants in Canada have experienced falling asleep or nodding off at some point while driving. TIRF also reports that 6.4% of all Canadian motor vehicle fatalities were fatigue-related in 2013.

ACS research scientist, Ali Shahidi Zandi, Ph.D. will be presenting “The Fitness-to-Drive Research and Development Program” at the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting taking place from January 13 to 17, 2019 in Washington, D.C. The objective of this program is to investigate if eye tracking data as a non-intrusive measure of driver behaviour can be reliably used for real-time monitoring of drowsiness and fatigue in drivers.

“With research indicating that about 50-70 million Americans suffer from sleep disorders these research developments are critical for managing fatigue in drivers and for reducing motor vehicle collisions and human fatalities”, says Dr. Zandi.

Dr. Zandi’s study included two independent experiments: a sustained vigilance task (SVT), which was monitored in a controlled environment under varied sleep conditions and a more real-world experiment where subjects participated in a simulated driving task (SDT) under monotonous driving conditions. In each experiment, infra-red based eye tracking systems and cameras monitored the various eye movements of participates and advanced machine learning methodologies were employed to analyze the data and estimate the state of vigilance. The results of the experiments verify a high correspondence between extracted eye tracking features and behavioural and physiological measures of vigilance.

ACS plans to continue to research and develop innovate, high quality, user-friendly products and services to promote road safety and keep people safe. The next steps in Dr. Zandi’s research will incorporate larger sample sizes, thorough analysis of the influence of age, gender and driving experience and real driving scenarios with challenging conditions.

About ACS

Alcohol Countermeasure Systems is an international group of companies with over 40 years of experience developing innovative technology to prevent impaired driving. A leading designer/manufacturer of alcohol ignition interlocks and breath alcohol testers, ACS provides products and services to law enforcement, automotive, industrial, public and personal safety markets. We improve global road safety through innovative design, manufacturing and customer support services. Please visit www.acs-corp.com.

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Contact:

Tony Power
research@acs-corp.com
60 International Boulevard
Toronto, Ontario M9W 6J2 Canada
www.acs-corp.com
416 619 3500