Sugar and stops in drivers with insulin-dependent type 1 diabetes.

Background: Diabetes is a major public health challenge, affecting millions of people worldwide. Abnormal physiology in diabetes, particularly hypoglycemia, can cause driver impairments that affect safe driving. While diabetes driver safety has been previously researched, few studies link real-time physiologic changes in drivers with diabetes to objective real-world driver safety, particularly at high-risk areas like intersections.

Quantifying vehicle control from physiology in type 1 diabetes.

Our goal is to measure real-world effects of at-risk driver physiology on safety-critical tasks like driving by monitoring driver behavior and physiology in real-time. Drivers with type 1 diabetes (T1D) have an elevated crash risk that is linked to abnormal blood glucose, particularly hypoglycemia. We tested the hypotheses that (1) T1D drivers would have overall impaired vehicle control behavior relative to control drivers without diabetes, (2) At-risk patterns of vehicle control in T1D drivers would be linked to at-risk, in-vehicle physiology, and (3) T1D drivers would show impaired vehicle control with more recent hypoglycemia prior to driving.