Dr. William C. Dement, Dir. Trying harder to stay awake may not help. Your thinking slows, you miss signals and risk-taking behavior increases. At 60 mph, if you close your eyes for only one second, you've traveled 88 feet. Even worse, sleepy drivers judgment is impaired, says Dr. Mark Rosekind, a fatigue specialist at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, CA .
Sleep deprivation is one of the major under-recognized killers in our society.
In the contest between the will to stay awake and the need to sleep, sleep will always win. Too often, the driver ends up wrapped around a telephone pole. To better track fatigue driving-related accidents, the State Police Traffic Bureau has combined innovative investigative techniques, crash scene observations and unique questioning to aid in determining whether accidents result from fatigued driving. Thomas Roth, Chief of the Sleep Disorders and Research Center, Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit , said tests have shown that the impact of sleeplessness is cumulative. Overall reaction times is slowed, and there is a decaying performance over time.