Sleepy, drunken drivers equally dangerous: study
Being sleepy behind the wheel is almost as bad as drinking and driving, suggests a new study from France.
The study, published as a letter in the Archives of Internal Medicine, found that drivers who were either drunk or sleepy were at least twice as likely to be responsible for a vehicle accident compared to their well-rested or sober counterparts.
Christopher Drake, an associate scientist at the Henry Ford Hospital Sleep Disorders and Research Center in Detroit, said the findings do not change what was already known, but the study is still “interesting.”
“We know from experimental studies that just four hours of sleep loss will produce as much impairment as a six pack. If you have a whole night of sleep loss, that’s equivalent to having a blood alcohol content of 0.19,” Drake, who was not involved with the new research, told Reuters Health.
Under the direction of Dr. Nicholas Moore at the Centre Hospitalo-Universitaire de Bordeaux in France, researchers analyzed information from 679 drivers who were admitted to a hospital in southwest France for more than 24 hours because of a serious accident between 2007 and 2009.
Accidents caused by sleepy drivers happen in an instant and can be deadly.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, sleepy drivers are responsible for at least 1,500 deaths every year and cause more than 100,000 accidents.
“A drowsy driver on the road can look a lot like a drunk driver,” said AAA’s Justin McNaull. “They have trouble keeping their car between the lines. Speed will vary.”
At a gas station and convenience store in Danville, W.V., a driver fell asleep at the wheel and his car went out of control, causing an explosion at a gas pump. No one was seriously hurt.
“It’s a miracle of God, a miracle of God,” store manager Vamshi Kesari said. “It could have been a massacre.”
The researchers used information from driver questionnaires and police reports to determine what may have contributed to the accidents. Drivers reported what medications they were on, their alcohol use and how sleepy they had been before the crash. Patient files provided information on blood alcohol levels.
The majority of the injured drivers were under 55 years old and men. Over half were on a motorcycle, about one-third of the drivers were in a car and 10 percent were peddling a bicycle at the time of the accident.
The police determined 355 of the drivers were responsible for their respective crash. From that, Moore and his colleagues found that being between the ages of 18 and 29 years old, driving a car, drinking alcohol and being sleepy were all tied to an increased risk of causing an accident.
For Sleepy Drivers, Coffee vs. Napping
Sleepy drivers who don’t want to stop their journey have two choices: pull over and take a short nap or load up with caffeine to stay awake.
So what’s the better option? French researchers decided to find out, testing the driving performance of two dozen sleep-deprived motorists. Participants first drove a two-mile course on the highway between 6 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., to measure their driving skill on a normal amount of sleep. On other days, they were asked to take the driving test again between 2 a.m. and 3:30 a.m. They were given either a placebo (decaffeinated coffee), regular coffee or allowed to take a 30-minute nap, according to the study, published this month in the medical journal Sleep.
A driving instructor in the car counted the number of inappropriate line crossings during each driving test. Line crossings were measured because drifting over the center line or off the road causes 65 percent of sleep-related accidents.
The decaf drinkers racked up a total of 159 line crossings while drowsy, compared to just 2 line crossings during the daytime driving test. Nappers did better, crossing lines only 84 times. But surprisingly, the coffee drinkers did the best in the sleepy driving test, crossing lines a total of 27 times.
Surprisingly, taking medications that carry warnings about affecting a driver’s abilities - one of the researchers’ main focuses - was tied to a lower risk of causing an accident.
Moore told Reuters Health that may be because people taking those medications are more aware of their side effects.