In-car nocturnal blue light exposure improves motorway driving: a randomized controlled trialShow others and affiliations
2012 (English)In: PLOS ONE, E-ISSN 1932-6203, Vol. 7, no 10, article id e46750
Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
Prolonged wakefulness greatly decreases nocturnal driving performance. The development of in-car countermeasures is a future challenge to prevent sleep-related accidents. The aim of this study is to determine whether continuous exposure to monochromatic light in the short wavelengths (blue light), placed on the dashboard, improves night-time driving performance. In this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over study, 48 healthy male participants (aged 20-50 years) drove 400 km (250 miles) on motorway during night-time. They randomly and consecutively received either continuous blue light exposure (GOLite, Philips, 468 nm) during driving or 2*200 mg of caffeine or placebo of caffeine before and during the break. Treatments were separated by at least 1 week. The outcomes were number of inappropriate line crossings (ILC) and mean standard deviation of the lateral position (SDLP). Eight participants (17%) complained about dazzle during blue light exposure and were removed from the analysis. Results from the 40 remaining participants (mean age ± SD: 32.9±11.1) showed that countermeasures reduced the number of inappropriate line crossings (ILC) (F(2,91.11) = 6.64; p<0.05). Indeed, ILC were lower with coffee (12.51 [95% CI, 5.86 to 19.66], p = 0.001) and blue light (14.58 [CI, 8.75 to 22.58], p = 0.003) than with placebo (26.42 [CI, 19.90 to 33.71]). Similar results were found for SDLP. Treatments did not modify the quality, quantity and timing of 3 subsequent nocturnal sleep episodes. Despite a lesser tolerance, a non-inferior efficacy of continuous nocturnal blue light exposure compared with caffeine suggests that this in-car countermeasure, used occasionally, could be used to fight nocturnal sleepiness at the wheel in blue light-tolerant drivers, whatever their age. More studies are needed to determine the reproducibility of data and to verify if it can be generalized to women.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2012. Vol. 7, no 10, article id e46750
Keywords [en]
Milled rumble strips, Centre of the lane, Narrow rural roads, Sleepy drivers, Driving behaviour, Driving simulator study
National Category
Neurosciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:su:diva-82096DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0046750ISI: 000310050200013PubMedID: 23094031Local ID: P2951OAI: oai:DiVA.org:su-82096DiVA, id: diva2:565669
2012-11-082012-11-082022-03-23Bibliographically approved