Sleep Deprivation Makes Driving Dangerous

Are you a hazard on the highways? Do you drive impaired? Most people would answer no, but they might be deluding themselves.
Far too many people drink and drive. Even a few glasses of wine can slow reaction time and interfere with judgment.
But almost everyone knows about the dangers of alcohol. Millions are unaware of two other factors that can make people dangerous behind the wheel-medications and insomnia.
An astonishing number of Americans are not getting enough sleep. Some push their bodies to the limits and beyond because they’re holding down two or three jobs. Others stay up late to do email, surf the Web or watch TV.
New research suggests that lack of sleep can be just as dangerous as too much alcohol. A recent study of interns and residents underscores the impact of sleep on performance.
The young doctors were tested for vigilance, attention and performance on a realistic driving simulator. Those who were working 90 hours a week reacted 7 percent more slowly and were 40 percent more likely to make mistakes.
Their lack of sleep led to poor performance that was comparable to the deterioration seen after alcohol ingestion (JAMA, Sept. 7, 2005).
These results help explain the higher-than-average risk of car crashes for doctors in training. (They are three times more likely than average to be involved in a driving accident.) Like people who drink too much, these sleep-deprived health professionals were not very good at judging how much their reaction time had slowed.
Although most people don’t have to work non-stop for 36 hours like interns and residents, millions of Americans are also sleep deprived. The trouble is that some of the sleeping pills that people use to combat insomnia may also leave them groggy and slow the next day.
For example, the new and highly advertised sleeping pill Lunesta comes with a warning for patients: “When you first start taking LUNESTA or any other sleep medicine, until you know whether the medicine will still have some effect on you the next day, use extreme care while doing anything that requires complete alertness, such as driving a car, operating machinery, or piloting an aircraft.”
For those who would like more information on non-drug approaches to overcoming insomnia, we offer our Guide to Getting a Good Night’s Sleep. Please send $2 in check or money order with a long (no. 10) stamped (60 cents), self-addressed envelope: Graedons’ The People’s Pharmacy®, No. I-70, P. O. Box 52027,
Durham, NC 27717-2027.
Sleeping pills are not the only medications that could interfere with alertness, judgment or reaction time. Anti-anxiety medications such as diazepam or alprazolam can affect vigilance. So can many allergy medicines.
Over-the-counter antihistamines that contain diphenhydramine (like Benadryl) are especially sedating.
Research has shown that people who took this allergy medicine were just as impaired as if they had been drinking alcohol (Annals of Internal Medicine, March 2000).
Most people, including medical residents, are responsible and would not deliberately put others at risk. But driving while impaired, whether because of lack of sleep, medications or alcohol, is risky business.