Drivers could soon have their blood tested for tiredness and face prosecution for being sleepy at the wheel following new research.
Motorists who cause crashes would face the new blood test as a result of the study funded by the Australian Government Office of Road Safety - which could be rolled out within two years, it is reported.
It comes as around half of drivers have admitted using their vehicle having had insufficient sleep - less than five hours - and the charity Brake has said that up to 20% of crashes could be caused by fatigue.
Brake also warned: “Most sleep-related crashes happen on motorways and dual-carriageways, probably because of the monotonous road environment and lack of driver stimulation.”
Prof Clare Anderson of at Monash University, in Melbourne, Australia, has been leading the development of the blood test.
Her team has identified five biomarkers in blood that can detect whether somebody has been awake for 24 hours or more with greater than 99% accuracy, reported the Guardian.
“We’ve been running laboratory studies to try to see if we can take a blood sample to determine how long somebody has been awake and in a laboratory environment we can detect if somebody’s been awake for 24 hours with almost perfect accuracy," she told BBC ’s Today programme.
And she has pointed out how big a part tiredness plays in accidents on the road.
“When you look at the major killers on the road, alcohol is one of them, speeding is another, and fatigue is one of them. But even though the solution to fatigue is quite simple, which is to get more sleep, our capacity to manage it is impaired because we don’t have tools to be able to monitor it like we do with alcohol," she told the Guardian.
She said that the test is able to be consistent for all people.
Prof Anderson continued: “They are really strongly related to how long somebody’s been awake, and they’re consistent across individuals. Some of them are lipids, some of them are produced in the gut, so they’re from different parts of the body – which is interesting, because sleep is implicated in a number of different health problems."
At the same time she said the biomarkers are not metabolites and so would not be affected by for example caffeine or adrenaline at an accident.
Meanwhile, the government has said that it is always ready to "note" new ideas for making roads safer.
The UK Department for Transport told The Mirror: “Drivers have a responsibility to ensure they are awake and alert on the road and should seek rest when feeling tired.
“The Government is not considering this type of testing, but we always note new ideas to make our roads safer.”
