The Effect of Different Road Types on Timber Truck Drivers by Assessing the Load Environment of Drivers by Monitoring Changes in Muscle Tension

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The reviewed article is an interesting, up-to-date study. It supplements the known information on the mental burden of drivers with data on drivers of timber trucks, important for forest transport. In my opinion, the practical, economic importance of the research is high, taking into account the large masses of wood transported on the roads. The justification for taking the topic is well described by the authors.

The work requires some additions. Possible corrections in the description of the methodology and presentation of the results.

[2-4] I suggest changing the title of the work to one that describes the issues that have been studied in more detail. The entire stress environment was not assessed, but one factor, the type of road. So, for example, the impact of the road type on ...

[26-28] In the summary, I would briefly justify the analyzes performed with these methods.

[29-34] Heart rate results are not included.

[34-36] The final conclusion is probably difficult to implement in practice. What alternate work could the driver do?

[89-108] This is a good fragment of the work, justifying the use of the adopted methods. I would add references describing subjective methods (questionnaires), e.g. works by Spinelli. The variability of the eye activity and its connection with mental tension was also the subject of other works by Szewczyk and Spinelli.

[134-141] I think that hypotheses that have not been verified must be removed from the text, only the impact of the road type was investigated.

[143] I think you would need to include a description of the cycles studied - number of cycles, weather conditions and traffic.

Why were these two measurement methods used? Do they complement?

[148-154] Need to describe the methods in more detail - I understand EMG and electromyography are the same? Likewise, HR and photoplethysmography?

[195] I suggest deleting the last two rows from the table

[223-225] Did drivers perform other activities during the tests, apart from driving vehicles?

[238-241] Why was not all the data used? The sum of these data does not add up to 15407356.

In table 2 and 3, the last lines are the reference level? - 100%. You would have to describe it.

Figures 2 and 3 illustrate the considerable variability of data between particular cycles. There is only one reference to the data contained in the text, it is worth commenting on the variability of the cycles.

Figures 4 and 5 should be supplemented with a description of the extreme and midpoints.

[409-411] this relationship is probably not verified - one would have to give its mathematical form.

[424-429] It is not fully consistent with the course of the Graff curve, it requires a comment.

[446-449] Probably impossible in practice

Author Response

Hello,

in the attached file we are sending the answers to reviewer No. 1

Regards

Pavel Škvor
corresponding author

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 2 Report

The topic is interesting in principle but the paper lacks enough literature review and diagrammatic presentation. The authors are encouraged to improve this manuscript. This reviewer has some comments regarding the clarity of the paper:

- Abstract is too general. Please revised it more attractive.

- Introduction. For driving on long routes, enough literature review of noise and natural sounds should be mentioned. Perhaps some recent refs are, for example: 1) Hong, X. C., Wang, G. Y., Liu, J., et al. (2021) Modeling the impact of soundscape drivers on perceived birdsongs in urban forests. Journal of Cleaner Production, 292, 125315; 2) Stansfeld, S. A. ,  Berglund, B. ,  Clark, C. ,  Lopez-Barrio, I. , &  Berry, B. F. . (2005). Aircraft and road traffic noise and children's cognition and health: a cross-national study. Lancet, 365(9475), 1942-1949.

-Methods.  Why drivers aged between 46 and 54 years? I consider that this interval cannot represent a lot of young people because they have different physiological sensitivities. Please explain more reasons.

- Tables.  There is inconsistent font size and excessive color, contributing to reading difficulties and confusion.

- Fig.2 and 3.   Perhaps line chart is better to clarity.

-Fig. 5 and 6.  The necessary information is missing.  Please consider box diagram.

-Others. Perhaps research limitations need to be mentioned.

 

Author Response

Hello,

in the attached file we are sending the answers to reviewer No. 2

Regards

Pavel Škvor
corresponding author

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Good job. Accept in present form