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- Approximately 100,000 police-reported crashes annually involve drowsiness/fatigue as a principal causal factor (source: The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA))
- Fewer than half of drowsiness/fatigue crashes are properly identified as such (Miller, 1991)
- At least 1,500 people are killed annually in fatigue-caused crashes (source: NHTSA)
- At least 71,000 people are injured in fall-asleep crashes each year (source: NHTSA).
- Fatigued drivers are responsible for more than $12.5 billion in monetary losses each year (source: NHTSA).
- Factors leading to fatigue-related crashes:
- Sleep-deprived or fatigued driver
- Driving long distances without rest breaks
- Driving through the night, the early afternoon, or at other times when they are normally asleep
- Taking medication that increases sleepiness or drinking alcohol
- Driving alone
- Driving on long, rural, boring roads
- Frequent driver
- People tend to fall asleep more on high-speed, long, boring, rural highways. New York police estimate that 30% of all fatal crashes along the New York Thruway occurred because the driver fell asleep at the wheel (source: National Sleep Foundation (NSF)).
- Truck drivers are especially susceptible to fatigue-related crashes.
- In addition to the high number of miles driven each year, many truckers may drive during the night when the body is sleepiest.
- Truckers may also have a high prevalence of a sleep and breathing disorder called sleep apnea.
- Studies suggest truck-driver fatigue may be a contributing factor in at least 30 to 40 percent of all heavy truck accidents (Source: NSF).
- Sleep research has shown that the risk of causing a wreck increases with the number of hours on duty (NSF).
- Studies reveal that most people need at least 8 hours of sleep to maintain proper alertness (NSF).
- A U.S. government study found that commercial drivers complying with hours-of-service rules generally obtain about 3 hours less sleep per day than necessary (NSF).
- A study of long distance truckers by the Insurance Institute for Automotive Safety revealed that 1/3 of all truckers routinely exceed their maximum driving hours and 75% of truckers occasionally do so.
- Fatigue impairs:
- reaction time;
- vision;
- judgment;
- information processing;
- short-term memory;
- motivation;
- vigilance; and
- performance.
- Driving while fatigued is the similar to driving while intoxicated:
- After 18 hours of sustained wakefulness a driver is impaired just as much as if he had a blood alcohol level of .05% (a 200 pound man imbibing three drinks in less than an hour has a BAC of .045%)
- 24 hours of sustained wakefulness equals a blood alcohol level of .10% (Dawson & Reid, 1997; Williamson & Feyer, 2000) (after six drinks in less than a hour, a 200 pound man has a BAC of just over .10%)
- Drinking one beer after 4 hours of sleep can have the effect of a six-pack (Roehrs, 1994)
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