Fatigue and the Use of Wearable Technology

摘要

Land transportation-related accidents are consistently one of the highest causes of fatalities within the oil and gas industry, as shown in the International Association of Oil & Gas Producers performance indicators. Despite widespread efforts, performance improvements have been slow to realize any benefits. Driver Fatigue is a major contributor to road accidents. Global studies estimate that fatigue or sleep related crashes could be a contributing factor in up to 50% of all road crashes. Whilst there is a number of indications that fatigue may have been involved, to date, there is no reliable method of determining this. Given that shift work and monotonous journeys are common within the oil and gas production industry it would be realistic to assume that fatigue would be a significant contributor to industry related crashes, accidents and near misses. Technology that combines with Fatigue Management Procedures to give valuable feedback to the operator and management can provide early warning to help prevent fatigue incidents. Whilst technology designed to detect driver fatigue has been available for some time the adoption of such technologies has been slow. Given that previous technologies were often in a development state, unreliable, impractical and costly a slow adoption rate is understandable. This paper will examine new wearable technology, based on EEG technology (the gold standard) focused on the operator, which has been reliably proven, easy to adopt and is producing impressive results in other industries particularly mining and trucking/freight.