The impact of 7-hour and 11-hour rest breaks between shifts on heavy vehicle truck drivers' sleep, alertness and naturalistic driving performance

Background: An inadequate rest break between shifts may contribute to driver sleepiness. This study assessed whether extending the major rest break between shifts from 7-hours (Australian industry standard) to 11-hours, improved drivers' sleep, alertness and naturalistic driving performance. Methods: 17 heavy vehicle drivers (16 male) were recruited to complete two conditions. Each condition comprised two 13-hour shifts, separated by either a 7-or 11-hour rest break. The initial 13-hour shift was the drivers' regular work. The rest break and following 13-hour shift were simulated. The simulated shift included 5 hours of naturalistic driving with measures of subjective sleepiness, physiological alertness (ocular and electroencephalogram) and performance (steering and lane departures). Results: 13 drivers provided useable data. Total sleep during the rest break was greater in the 11-hour than the 7 hour condition (median hours [25th to 75th percentile] 6.59 [6.23, 7.23] vs. 5.07 [4.46, 5.38], p = 0.008). During the simulated shift subjective sleepiness was marginally better for the 11-hour condition (mean Karolinska Sleepiness Scale [95th CI] = 4.52 [3.98, 5.07] vs. 5.12 [4.56, 5.68], p = 0.009). During the drive, ocular and vehicle metrics were improved for the 11-hour condition (p<0.05). Contrary to expectations, mean lane departures p/hour were increased during the 11-hour condition (1.34 [-0.38,3.07] vs. 0.63 [-0.2,1.47], p = 0.027). Conclusions: Extending the major rest between shifts substantially increases sleep duration and has a modest positive impact on driver alertness and performance. Future work should replicate the study in a larger sample size to improve generalisability and assess the impact of consecutive 7-hour major rest breaks.