Sleep-deprived driving

Sleep-deprived driving (commonly known as tired driving, drowsy driving, or fatigued driving) is the operation of a motor vehicle while being cognitively impaired by a lack of sleep. Sleep deprivation is a major cause of motor vehicle accidents, and it can impair the human brain as much as alcohol can. According to a 1998 survey, 23% of adults have fallen asleep while driving. According to the United States Department of Transportation, male drivers admit to have fallen asleep while driving twice as much as female drivers.

In the United States, 250,000 drivers fall asleep at the wheel every day, according to the Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School and in a national poll by the National Sleep Foundation, 54% of adult drivers said they had driven while drowsy during the past year with 28% saying they had actually fallen asleep while driving. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, drowsy driving is a factor in more than 100,000 crashes, resulting in 1,550 deaths and 40,000 injuries annually in the USA.

When a person does not get an adequate amount of sleep his or her ability to function is affected. As listed below their coordination is impaired, have longer reaction time, impairs judgment, and memory is impaired.

Sleep deprivation has been proven to affect driving ability in four areas:

Sufficient sleep before driving improves memory. Researchers recorded activity in the hippocampus during learning, and recorded from the same locations during sleep. The results were patterns that occurred during sleep resembled those that occurred during learning, except they were more rapid during sleep. Also, the amount of hippocampal activity during sleep correlated highly with a subsequent improvement in performance. Signs that tell a driver of a need to stop and rest

Numerous studies have found that sleep deprivation can affect driving as much as (and sometimes more than) alcohol. British researchers have found that driving after 17 to 18 hours of being awake is as harmful as driving with a blood alcohol level of .05%, the legal limit in many European countries. The MythBusters TV show dedicated a special episode "Tipsy vs. Tired" to exploring these findings and has confirmed that sleep deprivation can be more dangerous than driving under the influence of a minor amount of alcohol.

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