Does this sound familiar? You're driving on a quiet stretch of highway. Your eyelids start drooping. You blink hard to keep your eyes focused. Your head begins to nod, and you snap it up into position. Yet you continue driving, thinking you can manage your obvious fatigue.
This is drowsy driving, and it is a danger to everyone on the road.
According to data collected by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in 2009, drowsy driving crashes injured more than 30,000 people. And, because police can't always determine with certainty when driver fatigue causes a crash, the actual number may be higher.
At the Department of Transportation, safety is our number one priority. We have worked hard to reduce the risks of fatigue among airline pilots, commercial drivers, and rail and transit operators. But we also recognize that drowsy driving is a problem for the rest of us on America's roads.
And we are working hard to make our roads safer.
Innovations introduced by our Federal Highway Administration have already helped. Continuous shoulder rumble strips and raised lane dividers alert drivers when their vehicles drift. Cable barriers reduce the risk of collisions.
And a new approach called Safety Edge will help even more. This approach paves the edge of a road at an angle of 30 degrees instead of 90 degrees. This more gradual separation allows a driver whose car has drifted to steer the vehicle back onto the roadway more safely.
Our National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has also entered into a cooperative agreement with a group of automakers to help develop vehicle-to-vehicle communications. With features like Forward Collision Warning, Lane Change Assist, and Advanced Object Detection, vehicle-to-vehicle communication systems can alert drivers to potentially critical situations.
This technology holds great promise for increasing driver awareness and safety.
These technological advances to our roads and vehicles are terrific, but we can't win this fight without safer drivers. So please, when you are feeling fatigued, don't pick up your keys
Having put over 2.5 million miles accident and ticket free in the seat of an 18-wheeler over 23 years I have learned the many causes of fatigue. In my book, there is tired and there is fatigued. The only cure for being tired is sleep.
Fatigue can have many causes and several cures. Being sick and having it cause fatigue the cure is stay off the road and get the rest and medical care needed.
Another fatigue is what I call the "I'm not awake yet" syndrome. This occurs when a person wakes up from a nap or a sleep period and starts driving before they are fully awake. (One of the main reasons for the large number of first hour fatigue crashes in trucking). The cure is simple don't drive until you have had ample time to get the blood circulating to the brain. Don't ever wake up and start driving immediately, get up take a 10 minute walk and go to the restroom.
The third type of fatigue is the "I ate too much" syndrome. Just as we were taught not to swim for an hour after eating the same holds true for driving, give the body a chance to digest that large meal. Digesting requires blood to facilitate the process and that reduces the blood flow to the brain causing fatigue.
The fourth and easiest to cure is "The I have to use the Restroom" syndrome. As in the over-eating fatigue, the bladder and the bowels require blood to let you know it's that time. But I've found there is a delay of about thirty minutes from when you begin feeling fatigued and the need to go to the restroom. The cure, if you suddenly feel fatigued, don't fight it, get to a restroom and relieve yourself. (Nine times out of ten the "got to go" syndrome is the cause, and it's a simple solution. If you go to the restroom and it doesn't remove the fatigue than it one of the other three.
I'm not a scientist, but I am a trucker with millions of miles to test out my theories and 23 years of no accidents or tickets is pretty good proof I'm correct. (I do have national awards as proof my driving record.)
Posted by: Timothy D. Brady | March 18, 2011 at 10:48 AM
I remember doing research for a college paper about 8 years ago in which Mercedes? was developing sensors that would monitor driver fatigue by use of facial recognition software.
Hopefully something is developed to combat this danger. Unfortuantely, being fatigued affects your judgement so it may not be practical to have drivers make the decision for themselves.
Just my .02
Posted by: Jason B | March 18, 2011 at 02:07 PM
I'm shocked by the number of driving crashes as a result of drowsy driving, and like you mentioned, that number can be x times higher because investigators can't always tell if the crash was caused by drowsy driving.
The rumble strips and Safety Edge are great techniques which probably saved hundreds of lives already, but i think there should also be a budget allocated to prevention. We should educate people about the dangers of drowsy and distracted driving. Most people seem to think it will never happen to them, so we should bring it to their attention that it can happen to anyone...
Posted by: Mike Zimmerman | March 19, 2011 at 09:46 PM
I'm here 'cause I want to know if all the blogging about distracted driving and making things safer for different kinds of road users is for real.
In your home state, despite laws enacted expressly to do that, we're going backwards.
Cindy and David Combs were a couple in town that everybody knew. She was blind; he is developmentally delayed. They used their tandem for transportation.
Monday, March 7, a driver who 'may have been reading a map' essentially wiped them off a wide, open road with all kinds of room for passing at 4:30 in the afternoon, and David and Cindy ride a huge tandem with more flags and reflectors and lights than Carter has pills.
Our whole community is in shock. See
http://www.news-gazette.com/news/courts-police-and-fire/2011-03-08/map-reading-may-have-distracted-driver-car-bike-crash.html
and http://www.news-gazette.com/news/courts-police-and-fire/2011-03-09/couple-hit-motorist-maintained-independence-spite-disabilitie – at least that second one, to see their picture. (As I write, David is still in critical condition, back in ICU with internal injuries and broken bones.)
Yet, our state's attorney has said that our new 3-foot law, because it includes the word “reckless,” demands “wanton and willful” recklessness. When Matt Wilhelm was killed by a young lady who was downloading ringtones when she struck Matt (and not her first... or second... offense) it looks like this will be another “petty offense” charge.
And, of course, I could add more injuries and deaths to this list.
We're disgusted.
I can understand how in the past cases were not won with similar evidence. However, the public is now well aware of the dangers of distracted driving.
There's no way to get the lost lives back. Still, drivers should bear ****some**** fragment of responsibility for their carnage; perhaps lose the privilege of operating a motor vehicle for a spell?
I looked up “reckless.” What is cited as an example is: drives over an incline in the road, such as a railroad crossing, with the intent of making the vehicle airborne.
Essentially, yielding to an impulse and deciding that's more important than safety, eh?
Isn't that ***exactly*** what distracted driving is?
But no, here in Illinois, if you drive at excessive speed with your eyes closed, essentially: Failure to reduce speed to avoid an accident. Petty offense.
Is there anything we can do ? It seems like the law was passed to make politicians look good. All your talk – can you back it up with anything?
Posted by: Susan Jones | March 20, 2011 at 05:30 PM
Like the United States, we in Australia have similar issues with people driving very long distances - often through remote surroundings - and causing accidents by becoming drowsy at the wheel. The government here came up with a campaign encouraging drivers to take "power naps": in other words to pull over when starting to feel tired and rest for 20 minutes or so. Of course, this is pretty much just common sense but the language chosen - "power naps" - made it somewhat more attractive to what can be a macho culture.
Posted by: Philip Whitsundays | March 21, 2011 at 12:13 AM
Tired drivers are a particular danger to fleets - they do more miles than everyone else and are often pushed to work long hours. Good article here on how fleet manager can tackle the problem >> http://www.telogis.com/tired-driving-danger-to-your-fleet/
Posted by: Jas | March 27, 2011 at 04:26 PM
People need to learn when its time to stop and take a nap. I've lost two friends in car accidents that way. I read somewhere that drowsy driving is sometimes more dangerous than drunk driving. Cognitive functions are quite limited after so many hours of being awake.
Posted by: Rachael | March 29, 2011 at 04:44 PM
I lost my 16 yr old son due to the driver of the car he was in fell asleep. My son was killed in impact.
I have since learned a lot about Drowsy Driving.
More people are guilty of driving Drowsy than driving Drunk!
Drowsy Drivers drive the same as a drunk driver, so many police pull them over thinking they are pulling over a drunk person and find out it's a drowsy person and they must let them go! Just like a drunk person. YOU KNOW, if your drunk or drowsy, but you make a choice and get behind the wheel. It does not matter how far you have to go, you can still fall asleep. The public is slowly becoming more aware of this very real danger and hopefully more can be done to save lives!
Posted by: Ronnie Candace-Mom | April 08, 2011 at 01:59 PM
I love the Safety Edge idea. Years ago, driving at night on an unfamiliar road, I misjudged a curve and ended up on the rumble strip. It was very difficult to get my car off the strip and back onto the road. I had to turn my wheel further to the left than I thought was safe and I was afraid of "over-correcting" once I got back onto the road. Making that transition from rumble strip to road more gradual would be much safer and easier.
Posted by: Jen | April 18, 2011 at 09:34 AM
Safety Edge is an interesting concept to help correct the drivers who need to steer back onto the roadway. In addition to the communication system alerts; all together they show promising signs of increased driver awareness and safety. The best prevention to begin with is to not drive when fatigued. Interested in seeing the numbers (30,000+ currently) change after more technology becomes available.
Posted by: Cincinnati Subaru | May 29, 2011 at 05:45 PM