Both doubled the chance of being in an accident.Ī study shows that after 17 to 19 hours without sleep, performance was equivalent or worse than that of a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) level of 0.05 percent. Many times, blood alcohol content and/or drug use can overshadow the effects of drowsiness as cause for an accident.Īccording to the Archives of Internal Medicine, drunk driving and driving while fatigued were equally risky.
#Npr hourly news sleep september 14 driver
“Typically driver fatigue is not something you hear as often causing a fatality crash, but we don’t know if that is the whole story,” she said.
The Springfield News-Leader reported Monday that sleep fatigue is listed as a factor in the case of a 17-year-old, who late last month drove off the road from East Sunshine Street, hitting and killing a 39-year old man in a wheelchair.Ĭurrently there are no scientific ways to test for sleep deprivation, such as how a breathalyzer tests blood alcohol content. “Or if there happens to be any surveillance cameras around” “A lot of time it is a matter of what the person told the officer or what any witnesses saw,” Cox said.
She said that sleep deprivation is sometimes listed as a probable cause, but is hard to prove on-scene. Lisa Cox, public affairs officer for the Springfield police department, says that its office doesn’t keep data on sleep fatigue for non-fatal crashes. A 2005 study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found over 100,000 police-reported crashes are a direct result of driver fatigue each year.īut the estimated 1,550 deaths, 71,000 injuries and $12.5 billion in monetary losses might be underreported statistics, because it is still difficult to attribute crashes to sleepiness. Driving while drowsy or sleep deprived can be as dangerous as drunk driving.
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