The world we live in today contains over one billion cars worldwide (wards Auto, 2012). Cars play a huge role in our daily lives, it is important that we know how to drive fittingly as well as safely. In a recent study it was found that fatigue was the third highest cause of fatal car crashes, only just behind intoxicated driving and falling asleep behind the wheel (Beanland, Fitzharris, Young and Lenné, 2013). In this essay, it will be argued that sleep deprivation will lead to a lower performance in driving. This argument is supported by two studies which discusses how driving performance is affected by sleep deprivation with comparison to alcohol. Both the studies (Stephen and Robert, 1999; Williamson and Feyer, 1999) found that fatigued
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In this study there were two independent variables (IV); partakers were given a set amount of alcohol in four does to achieve a set BAC and had 5 levels of variation. The participants were also kept awake for a set amount of time, to a maximum of 28 hours and had 15 levels of variation. In order to measure the effects of the IV on the experiment, a series of dependent variables (DV) were used in the form of computer simulated tests; simple reaction time, Mackworth clock, dual task, tracking, spatial memory search, symbol digit test, grammatical test and memory search test. A total of 39 participants partook in this study, which 37 of them were male and two were female. 30 of the subjects volunteered from a transport company and nine from the Australian army. The study was conducted over a three day period with participants doing both alcohol and sleep deprivation tests; day one used for practice, day two for alcohol and day three for sleep deprivation. The alcohol experiment was conducted by giving the participants doses of alcohol at hourly intervals, with performance tests done after 30 minutes. With The sleep deprivation being conducted in a similar method, but after the fifth hour the performance tests were conducted every two hours for the next 20 hours. In order to remove any bias, tests were randomised and counterbalanced, so on day 2 one group did sleep deprivation first, while the other half did alcohol. The results show, as the alcohol concentration increased it produced a decrease in performance for most tests. The response time at BAC of 0.05% decreased by 8%-15% when compared to baseline tests, similarly hand eye coordination decreasing by 10%. Sleep deprivation also produced alike results with a decrease in performance and alertness. As the subjects were sleep deprived for a period of 13-23 hours, results showed
In this study there were two independent variables (IV); partakers were given a set amount of alcohol in four does to achieve a set BAC and had 5 levels of variation. The participants were also kept awake for a set amount of time, to a maximum of 28 hours and had 15 levels of variation. In order to measure the effects of the IV on the experiment, a series of dependent variables (DV) were used in the form of computer simulated tests; simple reaction time, Mackworth clock, dual task, tracking, spatial memory search, symbol digit test, grammatical test and memory search test. A total of 39 participants partook in this study, which 37 of them were male and two were female. 30 of the subjects volunteered from a transport company and nine from the Australian army. The study was conducted over a three day period with participants doing both alcohol and sleep deprivation tests; day one used for practice, day two for alcohol and day three for sleep deprivation. The alcohol experiment was conducted by giving the participants doses of alcohol at hourly intervals, with performance tests done after 30 minutes. With The sleep deprivation being conducted in a similar method, but after the fifth hour the performance tests were conducted every two hours for the next 20 hours. In order to remove any bias, tests were randomised and counterbalanced, so on day 2 one group did sleep deprivation first, while the other half did alcohol. The results show, as the alcohol concentration increased it produced a decrease in performance for most tests. The response time at BAC of 0.05% decreased by 8%-15% when compared to baseline tests, similarly hand eye coordination decreasing by 10%. Sleep deprivation also produced alike results with a decrease in performance and alertness. As the subjects were sleep deprived for a period of 13-23 hours, results showed