Specs stop sleep

A pair of glasses that warn a driver of the onset of potentially-lethal drowsiness up to 15 minutes before he or she is aware of the condition, has been developed in Australia as a world first.

Initially targeted at the road transport industry, but with wide-ranging further applications for commercial travellers, holidaymakers and other long-distance drivers, the 'Optalert' system uses invisible light beams sent from the inner frame of the fashionably-styled glasses to continually measure eye and eyelid movement.

They have been developed in Melbourne by leading sleep diagnostic specialist Dr Murray Johns, who believes they have the ability to save the 500 lives lost each year on Australian roads where drowsiness is believed to have been the prime cause of the accident.

When the in-vehicle processor detects a change in the wearer's eye movement pattern that corresponds with a scientific measure of the onset of drowsiness, a dashboard indicator lights up and a speaker warns the driver with a series of alerts of ever-increasing urgency.

Australia's two major road transport operators, Toll and Linfox, have already trialled the glasses extensively and have lent their support, while the NRMA is a significant investor in the project.

Because the glasses need to be individually fitted to ensure the correct focus of the eye-monitoring beams, they are not transferable from driver to driver. However clear, tinted and optical interchangeable lenses are available, or the glasses can be worn as a frame-only, without a lens.

Cost at this stage is a barrier to private motorists, with an individual Optalert system likely to cost around $3000, however following the expected wide scale take-up by the road transport industry in Australia and the United States, the unit cost should drop dramatically in a year or so.