Drowsy Driving can be as Dangerous as Drunk Driving

New research from AAA in its December 2016 “Foundation for Traffic Safety” report suggests that driving after only four or five hours of sleep can increase the risk of an accident to the same extent as drunk driving.
The study within the report, titled “Acute Sleep Deprivation and Risk of Motor Vehicle Crash Involvement,” used data from the Department of Transportation for 7,234 drivers in 4,571 auto accidents in a 30-month period.

Researchers were able to correlate the number of hours drivers slept within 24 hours of the accident to the risk of the accident itself, and they also factored whether a driver committed a definitively illegal or unsafe action. They found that up to 21% of auto accidents which result in death may involve drowsy driving, about 13% require medical attention in an emergency room, and about 7% of all auto accidents are caused by drowsy/sleep-deprived drivers.

The accident rate for drivers who had slept four hours or less in the 24 hours prior to the accident was 11.5 times higher than for those who slept seven hours or more, while the rate for drivers who slept six to seven hours was 1.3 times higher than for those who got seven or more. Furthermore, the researchers cautioned that the accidents studied did not include accidents which occurred between midnight and 6 a.m., which is arguably among the most dangerous sections of time for drowsy driving to result in an accident.

“A consensus working group convened by the National Sleep Foundation concluded that based on the totality of evidence available at the time of their meeting, drivers who have slept for less than two hours in the past 34 hours are not fit to operate a motor vehicle,” the authors wrote.

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