The contribution of sleepiness/fatigue to road crashes in Sweden and France.
| Reference number | |
| Coordinator | Stockholms universitet - Stressforskningsinstitutet |
| Funding from Vinnova | SEK 3 020 000 |
| Project duration | January 2009 - July 2011 |
| Status | Completed |
Purpose and goal
The aim was to investigate th role of fatigue/sleep loss in road accidents, particularly in relation to alcohol (which dominates the debate on accident causation). This is a Swedish subproject within a larger EU-project coordinated by the ERAnet. The main partner in the overarching project is French, but also Holland and Norway participates. The Swedish subproject is financed by Vinnova.
Results and expected effects
We expect information about the contribution of fatigue (sleep duration, time spent awake, time of day), as well as about the combination of fatigue and alcohol (probably strong effect) and other factos The role of fatigue in road accident causation has been strongly undersestimated up til now, presumably because of a lack of systematic attention in police investigations.
Approach and implementation
400 individuals who have been involved in a road accident and been hospitalized will be interviewed about time of rising, sleep duration, sleep qualtity, alcohol, other drugs as well as sleepiness, stress and distractions immediately before the accident. Alcohol levels will be obtained from blood samples. 400 controls will be interviewed in connection with police controls of alcohol within the same area as the accident cases, evently distributed across the 24h.In this group alcohol information will be obtained through breathalyzer tests. A twin study will be carried out in France.