The National Sleep Foundation recommends seven to nine hours of sleep per night, yet many people are not getting enough sleep. A new study by the American Automobile Association may cause some drivers to reconsider getting behind the wheel without a good night's rest.
According to the study, sleeping less than five hours a day could significantly elevate your risk of being involved in a car accident. In fact, the study cites people who sleep just one hour less than they normally do also have an increased risk. In some cases, experts compare driving while sleepy to driving with an illegal blood alcohol level of .08 or slightly higher.
"(When) sleeping less than seven hours, people are really gambling with their own [lives] and other lives," said Dr. Russell Rosenberg, a former chair of the National Sleep Foundation and founder, chief scientist and CEO of NeuroTrials Research in Sandy Springs.
Rosenberg said that research from the Natoinal Sleep Foundation as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that only about 40 percent of people sleep seven hours or more per night.
For many drivers, coffee or other caffeinated supplements are a typical way to compensate for not sleeping enough. Rosenberg says that drinking coffee about 15 minutes before driving could help attentiveness, but there’s no replacement for sleep.
Nothing can do for you what sleep does, says Rosenberg. “You can’t sleep faster. You can only cheat sleep for so long before there are consequences.”
According to the study, drowsy driving is linked to an estimated 21 percent of driving fatalities. Usually the crash victim is the driver because these accidents typically involve a single car.
The risk of an accident goes up with less sleep, and the study says that sleeping only four or five hours can increase your chances of a wreck by more than four times. If you sleep less than four hours, the risk triples to nearly 12 times.
"If you're sleeping less than two hours a night, you absolutely should not be driving," Rosenberg said. "There's evidence from the American Automobile Association study that even if you're sleeping fours hours a night, you shouldn't be driving because you are so impaired."
Delayed reaction time is the main danger when driving drowsy. When traveling 60 miles per hour, the driver moves 88 feet per second, which is almost the length of a football field in only three seconds. The slower the reaction time, the less time a driver can react to a tight curve or red light.
“People don’t realize how fast (and) how much distance you travel in even a second or two, so if you take your eyes off the road or your eyes close…it doesn’t take long to get into an accident,” Rosenberg said.
Texting while driving and driving under the influence are highly advertised, yet driving while drowsy is not.
"We know it is a problem," said Harris Blackwood, director of the Georgia Governor's Office of Highway Safety. "But to what degree, we don't have enough data to fully analyze it."
Blackwood said that drowsy driving is very similar to distracted driving because in both cases it’s hard to prove whether someone was actually sleep deprived, texting or distracted unless they self attest. This situation is different from drug or alcohol related crashes, where autopsies or blood tests can be conducted to prove someone’s inebriation.
Blackwood says Georgia highway safety experts have a plan to increase drowsy driving messaging by placing billboards at rest areas in Georgia.
Blackwood added, “We’re going to do everything we can do to get that message across.”
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