Insights

Optalert today announced that vehicles fitted with its Johns Drowsiness Scale (JDS) algorithm are now rolling off production lines for a leading European OEM – marking the first time a clinically validated, false-alert-free driver monitoring system has entered mass automotive production. For drivers who have grown tired of being beeped at, buzzed and warned by...

Driving drunk is a specific offence in almost every country, with a legislated threshold and a roadside test to enforce it. Driving drowsy is dangerous in much the same way, and in most jurisdictions it is not a specific offence at all. The gap is not indifference. It is a measurement problem. The short answer...

Some of the worst industrial and transport accidents on record share a factor that appears in the investigation reports but rarely in the headlines. The operators had not slept enough, were working through the body’s least alert hours, or had an untreated sleep disorder. Which major disasters have been linked to drowsiness? Official investigations have...

Sleep loss does not announce itself. A worker who slept five hours looks the same as one who slept eight, reports for the same shift, and believes they are functioning normally. The measurable difference in their performance is substantial, and it appears after a single bad night. The short answer Sleep deprivation degrades reaction time,...

Most employers have no idea how much undiagnosed sleep apnoea is costing them, for a straightforward reason: The condition is common, expensive, and almost entirely invisible to the health programmes already running in their workplace. The short answer Obstructive sleep apnoea affects close to 30% of working-age adults in the United States, and 80 to...

Two separate European requirements govern drowsiness detection in passenger vehicles, and they are routinely confused. One is law. The other is a consumer rating. They set different thresholds, are verified differently, and in January 2026 moved further apart rather than closer together. What the EU General Safety Regulation requires of a DDAW system Regulation (EU)...

The Johns Drowsiness Scale (JDS™) is a validated neurological biomarker that scores a person’s impairment from drowsiness on a scale of 0 to 10, derived entirely from the movements of their eyelids. It was developed by Optalert founder Dr. Murray Johns, the sleep scientist who also created the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS), and it is...

Since July 2024, all new models of passenger vehicles in Europe require a driver monitoring system (DMS) that can detect drowsiness. Engineering teams across the automotive industry have scrambled to learn about the science of drowsiness and develop systems that can detect it in drivers. Each of these systems then needs to be validated and...

On a mine site, risk is elevated long before an operator closes their eyes. The risk begins earlier, during the progressive build-up of drowsiness-related impairment. Key summary: By the time visible signs of drowsiness appear, impairment is often already elevated. Early-stage detection creates the intervention time needed to prevent an accident. Reactive drowsiness monitoring leaves...

Microsleeps are invisible, unpredictable, and more common than most people realise. The only way to prevent them is to detect the impairment that comes before them. Key summary: In this article, we examine microsleeps, which are one of the most dangerous and least understood phenomena in fatigue science. We explore: Why microsleeps are largely undetectable...

Fatigue kills. In mining, it contributes to equipment rollovers, haul truck collisions, and near-misses that never make the incident report. On the road, it causes roughly one-third of all accidents. Yet the regulatory landscape around fatigue is surprisingly thin, and where rules do exist, enforcement is shifting. This page covers the regulations that apply to...