ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL — EYE-OPENING FACTS ABOUT DRIVING DROWSY

By Nate Lee

Compared to the over six million crashes per year in the United States, 100,000 accidents due to drowsiness probably doesn’t sound that earth-shattering, even when it also adds up to over 1500 deaths.

The problem is, though, police, insurance companies and everyone else involved in highway safety acknowledge that the real number of accidents due to drowsy drivers is at least five times that. The problem is, it often goes unreported and drowsiness is difficult to detect by the police, especially since an accident tends to wake the driver up.

If you ask an honest trucker, he will admit that it is the number-one problem in his industry. (If you ask a dishonest trucker, he will put it second behind the highway patrol.)

So, what do you do even when The Dew isn’t doing it? Well, first, you keep aware of:

THE WARNING SIGNS
1. You just woke up from a recurring nightmare that you are driving off the highway and down a cliff to find out that it’s not a nightmare.
2. Your head is moving more than the bobblehead on your dashboard.
3. You are wondering who drove the past five miles and you are the only one in the car.
4. You are singing songs that you hate just because they are loud and obnoxious.
5. You haven’t moved your eyes away from the taillights of the car in front of you for the past five minutes, and you are wondering if that means you are hypnotized.
6. You wonder why you are suddenly in the passing lane, and you are actually in the oncoming car’s lane.
7. You keep slowing down below the minimum speed limit and then speeding up past the maximum speed limit, all in the space of a couple of minutes.
8. You yawn every thirty seconds and your yawns last twenty seconds each.
9. You wonder why the road is so bad and then you realize it is because you are driving on the shoulder rumble strip.
10. You keep alternating between the following “tried and true” methods of staying awake, only they aren’t working (because they don’t work).

WHAT WON’T WAKE YOU UP (FOR VERY LONG)
1. Biting your lower lip.
2. Hanging your head out of the window like a dog.
3. Turning the radio up.
4. Eating a snack.
5. Washing your face in cold water.
6. Massaging your feet.
7. Trying to remember all of your teachers since kindergarten (or other mind-engaging games like saying the alphabet backwards).
8. Dancing in your seat.
9. Hitting yourself in the head, thumping yourself, or slapping yourself.
10. Okay, go ahead and hit yourself. You deserve it if you are driving drowsy.

WHAT WILL KEEP YOU AWAKE
1. Sleeping before you start to drive.
2. Pulling off the road completely and taking a short nap.
3. Drinking coffee or other caffeine drinks (but these only last a relatively short time).
4. Pulling into a rest stop and exercising: running in place for two minutes; doing jumping jacks; and relaxing your muscles with neck and shoulder rolls (also not guaranteed to last very long).
5. Contemplating those 1500-plus people who will never wake up because they drove drowsy, or were killed by a drowsy driver – just last year.

Actually, this won’t keep you awake, but it may convince you that if you get some sleep, you may not arrive there when you planned, but at least you’ll arrive.