I just read a shocking statistic: a study by the Centers for Disease Control Prevention released this year found that 4.2 percent of surveyed drivers in 19 states admitted to having fallen asleep at the wheel in the previous month.
There were 196 million licensed drivers in the US last year, and if the CDC figure can be believed, that means on any given day about 2 million Americans are falling asleep while driving. With numbers that huge, is there any fleet manager out there who thinks some of those aren’t his or her own fleet drivers? They have to be.
Not that we don’t know how serious a safety problem that is, but the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says that about 100,000 accidents and 1,500 people die every year due to drowsy driving. And the thing is, it can happen to anyone.
I used to use a car service to take me back and forth to the airport. One day, after I stopped using them, one of the service’s drivers admitted to me that in the prior 12 months he’d fallen asleep while driving three times. He said they were all “microsleeps,” that he woke up the instant he fell asleep. It didn’t make me feel any safer.
According to what I hear, we’re suffering from a “sleep deprivation crisis.” I’ve read that most American adults are moderately to severely sleep-deprived, with as many as 70 percent of us getting six hours of sleep a night or less, instead of the recommended seven to eight, and that the percentage is continuing to rise.
Why aren’t we getting the rest we need? In our fast-paced society, I think people just want it all, and undervalue sleep. Some of us play too hard, and some of us work too hard. A big problem is our TV and computer screens, which reportedly reduce the amount of melatonin, the natural sleep-inducing hormones that our bodies make.
Accidents are bad enough. Fatal accidents are worse. And now the courts are more vigorously prosecuting sleepy drivers for manslaughter. For everybody’s benefit, fleet managers need to take a more proactive approach to the problem. Those who do are fighting a major cultural trend, but I think it’s a terrible mistake not to treat drowsy driving and sleep deprivation among fleet drivers any less seriously than drinking, using a cell phone, and texting while driving.
What can fleet managers do? Make certain to include sleepy driving behavior topics in their messages and provide fatigued driving training for drivers. It’s an easy topic to overlook, but the stakes are high.