Saving Tired Cops Stopping Drowsy Driving

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Saving Tired Cops Stopping Drowsy Driving
Bryan Vila, Ph.D. Professor, Washington State
University Wake Up, Michigan! Symposium Grand
Rapids, Michigan September 20, 2007
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Major issues

• Hazards of too-tired police
• Tired cops (causes and consequences)
• How do we turn this problem into an asset for
  fighting drowsy driving?

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Just up the road
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Tough venue for social change

• U.S. has 17,784 independent police agencies
• As diverse as America itself
• 800,000 sworn, mostly autonomous officers
• Most agencies have substantial fatigue problems.
• 50 of all cops have serious sleep problems.

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Cops sleep less, drive drowsy

• 53 of police get less than 6.5 hours of sleep
  daily
• Only 30 of general population gets so little
  sleep
• 2004 survey of 2,269 U.S. Canadian officers
  about on-duty fatigue found
• 91 reported being fatigued routinely
• 85 reported driving while drowsy
• 39 reported falling asleep at the wheel
• 75 said more officer education is needed on how
  to avoid drowsy driving

(NSF 2001, AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety 2004)
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Police Officer Death Rates 1974-2005
(FBI, LEOKA, 1974-2005)
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Key causes of police fatigue

• Long and irregular work hours due to
• Overtime assignments
• Off-duty court appearances
• Moonlighting
• Shift work
• Job stress
• Inadequate sleep
• Time-on-task effects

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Port Authority Example
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41 of Officers Sleep Poorly
( Vila et al. 2000)
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Tired Cops study4 agencies, 397 officers,
59,000 potential work days

• 14 reported always or usually being tired at
  beginning of their shifts
• 18 reported having a problem with motivation
  during the past month
• 16 reported frequent trouble staying awake while
  driving, eating, or during social activities
• Officers routinely exceeded U.S. work-hour
  standards for power plant operators truck
  drivers

Vila et al., 2000, NIJ grant 96-IJ-CX-0046
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Short-term impact of fatigue

• Decreases attentiveness
• Impairs physical and cognitive functioning
• Worsens mood
• Fuels a vicious cycle
• Fatigue reduces ability to deal with stress
• Stress reduces ability to deal with fatigue
• Stress fatigue increase vulnerability to disease

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Fatigue vs. alcohol impairment

• Laboratory comparisons
• Effect of fatigue vs. alcohol on alertness,
  cognition, motor speed, hand-eye coordination
  task accuracy
• Results
• 17 to 19 hours awake equivalent to .05 BAC
• 24 hours awake equivalent to 0.10 BAC

Note Fatigue Booze ? Synergy
(Williamson Feyer 2000, Dawson Reid 1997)
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Sleep and cognition (Results from 2-3 min.
serial addition/subtraction test every 2 hrs.)
Sleep and circadian phase are the primary causes
of fatigue among healthy individuals.
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Sleep restriction and vigilance
Baseline
Recovery
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Sleep and performance

• Sleep is essential for sustaining a soldier's
  performance on the battlefield
• Soldiers awake for 48 to 72 hours still may be
  able to hit a target
• But their ability to tell friend from foe
  declines rapidly with lack of sleep
• Costly mistakes, including friendly fire
  casualties, increase as sleep decreases.

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PET Study of Sleep Deprivation
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Poor sleep ? worse sleep

• Chronic lack of adequate, good-quality sleep can
  cause serious, chronic health problems
• Cardiovascular disease
• Gastrointestinal disease
• Metabolic and mood disorders
• All degrade sleep quality

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Police mortality study results

• Studies of 2,693 police officers employed by
  Buffalo, N.Y. PD for 5 years from 1950-90
• Death rates from cancer, cirrhosis of the liver,
  suicide and diabetes are much higher than in
  general population
• Buffalo police retirees died 7 years earlier
  than other municipal retirees
• Were working out exact causes now

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Officer suicide

• Suicides underreported.
• Accompanied by depression suicide ideation
• BCOPS study Depression suicide ideation
  increased in
• Male officers as overtime increases
• Female officers with more frequent work-schedule
  changes
• n105 randomly selected BPD officers, stratified
  by sex, 30F, 45M

Sources LEOKA, BJS, Violanti, DoD, CDC
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Problem summary

• Many police officers are overly tired.
• Fatigue impairs parts of the brain used for
• Clear thinking problem solving
• Making difficult moral choices
• Using technology
• Dealing with people
• Dealing with stress
• The right approach to fatigue management can
  protect both officers and their communities.

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Managing alertness inside agencies

• Causes of officer fatigue
• Sleep disruption overwork due to
• Shift work schedule changes
• Overtime extra shifts
• Off-duty court appearances
• Moonlighting
• Recreational, family personal activities

Work schedules deeply affect officers lives,
include officers in policy development!
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Fatigue countermeasures education Managers
Officers families

• Allocate people well
• Minimize shift rotation
• Take individual differences into account
• Minimize overtime long work hours
• Choose a schedule that fits
• Fatigue-management technology use

• Fatigue safety health issues
• Alertness edge importance
• Diet, exercise personal habits
• Circadian phase affects alertness
• Use of naps, caffeine and alertness switches

Build a culture that values fitness for duty by
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Making officers agents for change

• Integrate fatigue management into officers lives
  as they
• Educate people about drowsy driving
• Enforce traffic laws/investigate crashes
• Act as role models
• Reinforce fitness for duty as a core team value

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Involve police in research

• Collect data on
• Fatigue-related crashes
• Work hours, hours awake, etc.
• For the public for themselves
• Participate in research studies

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Technology research needs

• Relevant convincing research guides policy
  encourages change
• Example Sleep deprivation lab studies that
  include critical job task simulations
• Validated to closely mimic field conditions
  human responses
• We need tools that
• Identify general risks associated with different
  staffing/scheduling approaches
• Identify individual fatigue levels

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Potential fatigue evaluation technologies

• Actigraphy
• American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommendation
• FASTTM
• Validated by DOT DoD
• Accident Risk Study
• DOT/Federal Railroad Administration
• Weakness Dont assess most individual variation
  group-level risks only

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Actigraphy and sleep scoring(Belenky, 2007)
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FASTTM performance prediction(Belenky 2007)
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USDOT-FRA Validation and Calibration of a
Fatigue Assessment Tool for Railroad Work
Schedules, Summary Report, October 2006
Table 1. Human factors accident cumulative risk
at various criterion levels of effectiveness