Episode 48

 

Sleep and Driving

Want to decrease the odds of being at fault in a motor vehicle crash by 1,410%?

In this episode, I explore the relationship between your sleep health and your driving.

What we experience during our intended sleep periods can have a dramatic effect on how we are able to live during the day. We’ve talked before on what a profound effect sleep can have on life and limb - and not just via direct health effects. The worse one’s sleep, the higher the risk for other potential harm, like physical injury. And the worse one’s sleep, the more challenging complex cognitive and motor behaviors like driving can be!

So when individuals suffer sleep difficulty, they are far more likely to end up in a motor vehicle crash. AAA estimates over 325,000 crashes a year are due to drowsy driving, killing thousands of Americans every year. And whether the issue is daytime sleepiness, short sleep duration, subjective poor quality sleep, the use of sleeping pills, and especially suffering sleep apnea, we see about a doubling of the risk of getting in a crash. 

This risk exists whether you’re an ordinary commuter or a professional commercial driver. And at least for commercial drivers, we see enormous cost savings of well over $5000 per year per driver when sleep disorders are screened for and addressed. Furthermore, even for non-professional drivers, there is a significant reduction in the risk of motor vehicle crashes once they are treated for sleep apnea. 

And if you want to dramatically reduce the risk of being involved in a crash and then being found at fault for said crash, the best thing is to regularly achieve 7+ hours of sleep nightly. Even getting just 6 hours of sleep at night increases the likelihood of being at fault for a crash by 30%. 

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