Drivers may underestimate how tired they really are, leading them to stay behind the wheel instead of stopping for a much-needed break, new AAA research has found.<\/p>\n
Estimates by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety reveal that 16 to 21 per cent of all police-reported fatal vehicle crashes likely involve drowsy driving.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing drowsy while driving is a dangerous form of impairment, and it does not resolve or improve with continued driving,\u201d said Dr David Yang, the Foundation\u2019s president and executive director.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur goal is to help drivers learn to heed the early warning signs of drowsiness so they can stop, rest, and then continue their journey as safely as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the study, researchers designed a 150-mile simulated nighttime highway driving experiment for the study. Every 20 miles, there was a simulated \u201crest area\u201d at which participants could stop, leave the driving simulator, walk around, nap, drink coffee, or eat a snack. A monetary incentive encouraged drivers to complete the drive as quickly as possible while incentivizing them to avoid crashing. Researchers used a brief survey to gauge how drowsy drivers felt and measured the percentage of time their eyes were closed to gauge sleepiness.<\/p>\n
When drivers rated their level of drowsiness as low, 75 per cent of them were, in fact, moderately or severely drowsy.<\/p>\n
Even when drivers recognized they were extremely drowsy, they still declined 75 per cent of their opportunities to take breaks and kept driving.<\/p>\n
The AAA said the results demonstrated a need to help drivers recognize how drowsy they are and said knowing the warning signs of drowsiness could help drivers to avoid dozing off behind the wheel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Drivers may underestimate how tired they really are, leading them to stay behind the wheel instead of stopping for a much-needed break, new AAA research has found. Estimates by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety reveal that 16 to 21 per cent of all police-reported fatal vehicle crashes likely involve drowsy driving. \u201cBeing drowsy while […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":14213,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-global-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edriving.com\/three60\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edriving.com\/three60\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edriving.com\/three60\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edriving.com\/three60\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edriving.com\/three60\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.edriving.com\/three60\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edriving.com\/three60\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edriving.com\/three60\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edriving.com\/three60\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edriving.com\/three60\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}