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Evidence map

Driver fatigue: what the evidence base looks like

5 publications, 0 of them trials and 0 syntheses. This page describes the shape of that literature rather than summarising its conclusions.

Updated 3 min read 5 citations

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What the evidence on driver fatigue is made of Of 5 publications on this topic, the breakdown by study type: 2 review, 3 other. 23review (2)other (3)
5 publications, by study type. Volume is not strength — the same count can be a settled question or a pile of commentary, and which one it is depends almost entirely on this breakdown. Harvested from PubMed and Crossref; publication type as recorded by the source.

What this literature is made of

This is a thin evidence base. It is included because the question gets asked, not because the literature has settled it — and a page that pretended otherwise would be worse than one that says so.

The distinction that matters most is between synthesis and primary research. A meta-analysis pools trials and is the closest thing to a settled answer a field produces. A narrative review is one group's reading of the same material and can be selective without being dishonest. Counting them together, which most citation counts do, obscures exactly the thing you want to know.

When the driver fatigue literature was published Publication years for the 5 papers on this topic, grouped into bands from before 2015 through to 2023 onwards. Before 20154 papers2015-20191 papers
Mostly settled or quiet. The most recent paper here is from 2015, which usually means either a closed question or one that has fallen out of fashion. Publication years as recorded by PubMed and Crossref.

How this page is built

Everything above is computed from the citations this site harvested from PubMed and Crossref, not written by hand. When the weekly harvest finds a new paper on this topic, these counts change and the characterisation changes with them. That is the point: a hand-written claim about how strong an evidence base is starts decaying the day it is written.

Publication type is taken as the source records it. That is imperfect — journals label inconsistently, and a paper indexed as a "review" may be a systematic one — so treat the bands as approximate. They are accurate enough to distinguish a trial literature from a commentary literature, which is the distinction that matters.

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The strongest work on this topic

Ordered by study design first, then recency. The full set is listed in the references below.

  1. Effect of fatigue on the fitness to drive — Makowiec-Dabrowska T, Bortkiewicz A, Siedlecka J et al., 2011, review
  2. Road safety research in China: review and appraisal — Wang P, Rau PL, Salvendy G, 2010, review
  3. Driving fatigue in professional drivers: a survey of truck and taxi drivers — Meng F, Li S, Cao L et al., 2015, journal article
  4. The impacts of multiple rest-break periods on commercial truck driver's crash risk — Chen C, Xie Y, 2014, journal article
  5. Driver fatigue and highway driving: a simulator study — Ting PH, Hwang JR, Doong JL et al., 2008, journal article
How much research is there on driver fatigue?
5 publications are indexed here, of which 0 are trials and 0 are syntheses.
Does more research mean a stronger conclusion?
No. Composition matters more than volume — five randomised trials support a claim far better than fifty commentaries, and citation counts do not distinguish between them.
How current is this?
The most recent paper indexed here is from 2015. The set is refreshed weekly from PubMed and Crossref.
Why does this page not tell me the answer?
Because summarising a literature into a conclusion requires reading it, and doing that automatically is how confident nonsense gets published. This page tells you how much weight a conclusion could bear; the articles on this site do the interpreting.

References

Every citation below links to the original peer-reviewed record on PubMed or via DOI. Nothing here is a substitute for medical advice.

  1. [Effect of fatigue on the fitness to drive] Makowiec-Dabrowska T, Bortkiewicz A, Siedlecka J, et al. · Medycyna pracy · 2011 · Review PubMed 21870418
  2. Road safety research in China: review and appraisal Wang P, Rau PL, Salvendy G · Traffic injury prevention · 2010 · Review DOIPubMed 20730690
  3. Driving fatigue in professional drivers: a survey of truck and taxi drivers Meng F, Li S, Cao L, et al. · Traffic injury prevention · 2015 · Journal article DOIPubMed 25357206
  4. The impacts of multiple rest-break periods on commercial truck driver's crash risk Chen C, Xie Y · Journal of safety research · 2014 · Journal article DOIPubMed 24529096
  5. Driver fatigue and highway driving: a simulator study Ting PH, Hwang JR, Doong JL, et al. · Physiology & behavior · 2008 · Journal article DOIPubMed 18402991