ABSTRACT
The Nature of Driver Fatigue
Driver stress and fatigue are well known to be potentially dangerous during vehicle driving (Hitchcock and Matthews, 2005). The effects of fatigue are particularly well documented. Evidence for the dangers of fatigue has come from various sources. These include analyses of causal factors in crashes, video observation of driving, company records, and experimental studies using driving simulators (see Williamson et al., 2011, for a review). However, the term 'fatigue' is rather vague and notoriously hard to define. It may be seen as a subjective state characterized by tiredness (Matthews et al., forthcoming a), as a loss of task motivation and unwillingness to commit effort (Brown, 1997), or as a biologically driven need for rest (Williamson et al., 2011).
