The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Coimbatore News : Driving with ‘sleep debt’ can prove fatal Drowsy driving

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Nov 28, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore

Driving with ‘sleep debt’ can prove fatal Drowsy driving

K.V. Prasad

Micro sleep while at the wheel overpowers ability to sense dangers on roads

Photo: S. Siva Saravanan

Trapped: A motorcycle that got trapped under a bus on Tiruchi Road in which both rider and pillion rider sustained injuries. —

Coimbatore: Uyir, a Rotary-Ganga Hospital project to prevent road accidents stresses the need for greater awareness on the dangers of dozing off while driving a vehicle. Director of the hospital and spinal surgeon S. Rajasekaran, who heads the movement, says a number of accidents take place because of faulty planning of trips.

Sleep deprivation or ‘sleep debt’ is a chronic lack of sleep that leads to the driver dosing off unintentionally while at the wheel. In all probability, the result is catastrophic. People lose their lives or limbs and families are shattered by a life-long crippling effect dealt by accidents.

Quoting studies, Dr. Rajasekaran says that while the exact incidence of accidents because of drowsy driving is unknown in India, the national highway traffic safety administration in the U.S. has estimated that it is the cause for 100,000 automobile accidents, 71,000 injuries and 1,500 fatalities. Drowsy driving accidents are more serious than other wrecks because they often occur on high speed highways. The driver maintains the same speed for a long period of time, there is no attempt to avoid the crash since the driver’s eyes are closed and he is usually alone with no one to alert him. Hence it is very important that the passengers in a long-distance travel must remain awake, as a group of sleeping passengers pre-disposes to the driver also falling asleep. In India, pilgrims on multi-stop temple visits generally fall asleep as a whole group and the driver is usually the only one awake through the whole night.

Dr. Rajasekeran says there is a need to highlight the risks of ‘micro sleep’. “Micro sleeps are brief, unintended episodes of loss of attention which may occur when a person is fatigued but trying to stay awake to perform monotonous tasks like driving a car on a highway,” he says.

The episodes mostly last only a few seconds and often the person is not aware that a micro sleep event has occurred. “What is interesting is that micro sleeps can occur even when a person’s eyes are open but he will fail to respond to outside information. This is very important as a driver susceptible to micro sleep will not see a red signal or notice that there is a curve on the road or an overtaking vehicle from the opposite side,” says the surgeon.

“Micro sleeps are also more likely to occur at certain times of the day, such as in the pre-dawn hours and mid afternoon hours - when the body is programmed by our normal circadian rhythm to sleep. Micro sleep also increases when there is ‘sleep deprivation’ or there is a cumulative ‘sleep debt’, one of the main causes of drowsy driving.” Studies show that people on an average sleep one-and-a-half to two hours less now than 50 years ago. For people who are very successful and on the ‘upward curve’, the sleep debt can be chronic and range from two to three hours’ deficiency a day.

Most people require at least eight hours of sleep to avoid feeling sleepy the next morning. But they rarely get to do this because of their tight schedules.

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