Sleepiness in long distance truck driving: an ambulatory EEG study of night driving.

Eighteen truck drivers had their EEG recorded continuously during a night or evening drive between southern Sweden and Stockholm (500 km). They also carried out self ratings of sleepiness and performance every hour. The EEG was subjected to spectral analysis. The drivers were divided into two groups with a night group (n = 7) who drove between 20:30 to 97:20 and an evening group (n = 11) who drove between 18:20 and 04:00. The night group showed higher subjective sleepiness and lower subjective performance, and increased alpha and theta burst activity during the last three hours of the drive. The groups did not differ for the first 2-3 h of the drive. For the night group, a significant intraindividual correlation was found between subjective sleepiness and EEG alpha burst activity. End-of-the-drive subjective sleepiness and alpha burst activity were significantly correlated with total work hours and arrival time but not with age, diurnal type, prior (rated) sleep length, total break time, drive time or prior time awake. A regression analysis showed that total work hours and total break time predicted 66% of the variance of alpha burst activity during the end of the drive.