General News: A call to tackle sleepiness at the wheel

Date: 21 March 2008

Joint national transport research programme looks to better understand and deal with driver fatigue.

“Sleepiness at the wheel” is not only a scientific problem but a political issue. Understanding and fighting it are political challenges. Indeed, sleepiness seems to be the cause of at least 15-20% of accidents on our roads. Its impact on accidents may be even higher than that of alcohol.

However, today sleepiness is not sufficiently taken into account in transport policies in Europe (both at national and European levels). Its effects are rather unknown. In this context national transport research programmes from France (MEDAD), the Netherlands (DVS), Norway (Vegvesen) and Sweden (VINNOVA) have entered into cooperation and announced a joint call on "Sleepiness at the wheel". The call was prepared in the frame of ERA-NET TRANSPORT and launched on 25 February 2008.

The joint activity aims at both raising awareness on this issue and coordinating new national research policies in the given field. Its two main objectives are to:

• understand prevalence, risk and mechanisms and then
• identify effective countermeasures to fight sleepiness at the wheel

The text of the call is available on http://www.transport-era.net/research-calls.html
 
For further information, please contact the ERA-NET TRANSPORT Secretariat at Tel: +49 221 806 4141 or info@transport-era.net