Sleepiness and accidents among professional drivers

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the relation between sleepiness and accidents among professional drivers in Iran. This is a case-control study carried out among 820 professional drivers of whom 300 drivers were assigned to the case group and 520 drivers were as the control group, of whom 104 cases were excluded from the study because their questionnaire was not completed. Finally, the collected data on 716 cases were analyzed. The data relating to road traffic accidents, demographic factors and sleepiness were collected using questionnaire and interview. Data analysis was performed using SPSS16 (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 16). The mean of sleepiness score among cases was 6.2 whereas this mean in control group was 4.6. 20.9% of the experimental group had Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS)>10 while just 8.2% of the controls had ESS>10. The difference between sleepiness in the case who had precedence of accident and controls without precedence of accident was statistically significant (P<0.001). This study showed that sleepiness in drivers who had precedence of accidents was higher than the drivers without any accidents. Sleepiness can be one of the causes of accidents among the professional drivers in Iran.