How can we manage driver sleepiness? A career in collaboration.

Understanding sleepiness – including how to manage it to minimise safety risk – is vitally important. However, it is one thing to recognise that sleepiness is a critical safety issue; it is quite another to set up a successful, scientifically informed fatigue risk management programme. Sleepiness management is a complex issue within the Transport Human Factors domain.

Professor Filtness’ lecture will draw on 16 years of research work in this area, undertaken with a range of amazing collaborators, to journey through what we do and don’t know about driver sleepiness.

Ultimately, much can be done to manage it – but it is essential to understand the causes before appropriate solutions can be identified and implemented.

Professor Ashleigh Filtness is fascinated by sleepiness and fatigue and their impact on safety. She has spent more than 16 years performing transportation safety research and has authored over 90 peer-reviewed publications.

Since completing her PhD – “Obstructive sleep apnoea and daytime driver sleepiness” (2011) – she has continued her fatigue research working in the Human Factors Groups at the Monash University Accident Research Centre (Melbourne) and the Queensland University of Technology’s Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety (Brisbane).

She joined 含羞草视频’s Transport Safety Research Centre in 2016, and currently serves as her School’s Director of Knowledge Exchange and Innovation.

Her research enhances our understanding of the situations that contribute to sleepiness and fatigue, and how they can best be managed to reduce their impact on safety. She specialises in vehicle operator impairment in road and rail transport – and has a wealth of experience leading competitively funded research, as well as industry and government funded projects in her specialist field.