Drowsy Driving

Four percent of U.S. adults nodded off or fell asleep at least once while driving in the previous month.

You’ve been there. The midnight call from an important client that just experienced a devastating loss. Or the sick child who kept you up until wee hours of the morning. Or maybe it was just a late evening at your local insurance conference.

Driving while drowsy – we’ve all been there. But drowsy driving is a risk that most cannot afford to take. You may make it safely to your desired destination, but for some, the consequences are disastrous.

More than 11,000 deaths were attributed to drowsy driving from 2000 to 2010, according to federal statistics. And experts say it’s a problem that can’t easily be solved by new laws because proving sleepiness behind the wheel is difficult, if not impossible. Quantifying drowsy driving is not an exact science.

When it comes to workers behind the wheel, laws banning commercial truck and motor coach operators from driving more than 11 hours a day and requiring 10 hours between shifts are flawed because they often rely on drivers reporting those hours themselves.

In a drowsy driving case late last year, a tour bus driver was acquitted of manslaughter and negligent homicide in a 2011 Bronx, N.Y., crash that killed 15 people. A jury rejected prosecutors’ arguments that Ophadell Williams was so sleep-deprived from working another job that it affected his reflexes as much as if he was intoxicated.

“If you are going to try and make fatigue – sleepiness – a criminal legal issue in a motor vehicle accident, you have a lot, lot more to prove,” said Patrick Bruno, who defended Williams, the Associated Press reported.

New Jersey is the only state that has successfully passed legislation addressing drowsy driving. But “Maggie’s Law” doesn’t really solve the problem because prosecutors must show that a driver had been awake for 24 consecutive hours to prove possible recklessness.

Experts claim there’s no easy way to legislate against sleepiness and that the real problem lies in the culture of most Americans.

Mark Rosekind, a National Transportation Safety Board member who formerly directed a sleep research center at Stanford University, says it’s a pervasive problem that requires a culture change.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a study this year that found 4 percent of U.S. adults nodded off or fell asleep at least once while driving in the previous month.

“For some reason, people in our culture think it’s OK to lose sleep and get behind the wheel,” Rosekind said. “It’s just as bad as drinking and driving. As far as public awareness, drowsy driving is in the dark ages compared to that, but it’s just as dangerous.”

Topics Personal Auto