Why OPTOVERA
Every safety system tracks what workers do.
None add an objective readiness review before the task begins.
The gap between appearance and reality is where incidents happen
Workers don’t always start the job in safe conditions.
Fatigue, stress, medications, and other factors can affect the body before they are visible. A worker can appear ready — and believe they are ready — while their actual state tells a different story.
Most systems never measure that starting point. They assume it.
Four requirements. One standard.
What a reliable safety measurement must be
Tamper-resistant
The result cannot be influenced, masked, or consciously controlled. The signal must come from the body independently of effort or cooperation.
Immediate
The measurement is taken at the point of work — not inferred from past behavior, historical trends, or schedule data.
Preventive
Detection after performance has already been affected is not prevention — it is incident management. A reliable check must happen before the task begins.
Non-intrusive
An assessment that disrupts operations or requires sustained participation will not be used consistently. Consistency is the only way it provides value.
PVT, Wearables, Cameras
What Each Approach Can and Cannot Tell You
Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT)
Wearables
Vehicle Camera
PVT
Wearables
Cameras
OPTOVERA Scan
Tamper-resistant
Result cannot be influenced, masked, or consciously controlled
Immediate
Reflects current state, not trends
Non-intrusive
Fits operational workflows without friction
Continuous monitoring
Detects behavior during the task
Preventive
Supports review before the shift begins
Meets requirement
Partial
Does not meet
Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT)
The flaw: it measures effort, not state.
PVT tools assess worker readiness by asking workers to respond to visual cues. When a worker is engaged, cooperative, and trying, the test produces a result. But that result reflects task performance under conscious effort, not an involuntary response.
A worker with a degraded readiness state can still perform adequately on a PVT. A worker who is distracted or uncooperative can underperform without their readiness state being genuinely compromised. The test cannot distinguish between the two.
PVT measures what a person can do when trying. It says nothing about the readiness state that exists regardless of effort.
And it cannot simply be made shorter. The test works by catching the moments a tired worker misses a cue. Those moments are rare, so the test needs time to find them. The gold standard version runs 10 minutes. Three-minute versions have not matched it. A one-minute or shorter reaction-time app is not a shorter PVT; it is a different test.
Basner, Mollicone & Dinges (2011); Antler et al. (2022)
Wearables
The flaw: they track trends, not measure the current state.
Wearables monitor heart rate, oxygen saturation, skin temperature, and similar signals over time. They are valuable wellness tools. They are not readiness state assessments.
The metrics they capture are indirect proxies for readiness — influenced by fitness level, individual variation, and context. A single reading does not tell you whether this worker, at this moment, has the readiness state required to operate safely in a high-risk environment.
Wearables tell you how someone has been. They cannot tell you what their state is right now.
Vehicle and Workplace Cameras
Strong on distraction. Late on fatigue.
Cameras are the strongest control available for what happens inside the cab. In operational fleet studies, distraction accounts for roughly four out of five alerts, and that is where operators report most of the safety benefit.
Fatigue is harder. A camera infers it from eyelid closure and head position, and those are lagging signals: by the time they appear, a microsleep may already have occurred. In one independent field evaluation, 87 of 88 in-cab fatigue alarms were later reclassified as distraction rather than fatigue. High alert volume then trains people to discount the alarm that matters.
Adding OPTOVERA to a camera fleet:
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Covers the window a camera cannot see.
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Reduces the number of events the camera has to catch.
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Gives the fatigue signal an objective reference point taken before the task, not inferred from behaviour during it.
Cameras watch the task. OPTOVERA checks the driver before the task starts.
Shetty & Kohorst, FPInnovations / BC Forest Safety Council (2019); Higginson, Dawson & Sprajcer, National Heavy Vehicle Regulator (2019)
Why OPTOVERA Is Different
Where other approaches estimate,
OPTOVERA measures.
OPTOVERA Scan uses Pupillary Light Reflex (PLR) — an involuntary neurological response regulated by the autonomic nervous system.
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It cannot be consciously influenced.
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It cannot be masked by effort or behavior.
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It is compared with the worker’s own baseline at the time of the scan.
The result is an objective, tamper-resistant, cause-agnostic baseline-based measurement input — available in 60 seconds, at the point of work, before the shift begins.
It is not a trend, schedule estimate, or delayed observation. It adds a current measurement to the readiness review process before the task begins.
For a full explanation of PLR measurement,