Buckle Up! OSHA Joins The NSC Road To Zero Coalition

Buckle Up! OSHA Joins The NSC Road To Zero Coalition

In January 2025, OSHA (the US Occupational and Safety Health Administration) announced that it had joined the National Safety Council (NSC) Road to Zero Coalition, an initiative dedicated to eradicating roadway fatalities. Roadway deaths are common in the US, accounting for 37% of all work-related fatalities in 2023. A major reason is fatigue and distraction. In jobs that involve long and tiresome journeys, drivers can become tired and susceptible to lapses in concentration.

To combat this, businesses have for some time leveraged EHS technologies to monitor driver fatigue levels. The first such tool was a camera that warned a driver when their eyes or head started to droop. Technologies have improved significantly since then: devices are now more subtle – and often wearable. The new tools fall into three categories: electroencephalography (EEG) sensors that monitor brain activity, indicating fatigue and microsleeps; solutions that track visual cues; and applications that use sleep and activity data to calculate fatigue risk levels.

Technology vendor Maven Machines provides Co-Pilot, a small headset that monitors driver fatigue by tracking the user’s line of sight and number of mirror checks. As a driver becomes tired, they begin to lose focus on the road ahead, replacing mirror checks with head bobs – an indication that they are starting to fall asleep. On detecting this, the device instantly alerts the operator to intervene. The headset forms part of Maven’s broader technology ecosystem of vehicle sensors, which provide real-time data on speed, harsh braking, fatigue, distraction and weather conditions.

Another example of a technology used to monitor driver fatigue is Optalert’s advanced glasses. These have an LED lightbulb built into their frame to track a driver’s eyelid movements. The glasses connect to a small handheld device, the 'eagle LIGHT', which a driver displays on their dashboard to indicate how close they are to falling asleep. If they fail to respond to an alert, the system triggers an alarm before sleep onset. This tool forms part of the broader EHS system of proactive risk management, in which potential issues are identified, and solutions planned, in advance.

The proper use of these tools ensures that drivers are in the right condition to continue with their journeys, without placing themselves or other road users in danger. It also enables them to plan their journeys, implementing rest periods where appropriate. To read more about fleet safety, click here.