Lack of Sleep Can Become the Reason for Car Accident
The news published by Powys County Times on 28th November 2019 stated that a 65-year-old farmer, Robert Watkins, died after falling asleep and crashing his car into a stone wall while driving home from Royal Welsh Show. According to Dean Burnett, the forensic investigator, he assumed that Mr. Watkins’s car was colliding with a fence and then crashed into the wall. Two passing drivers found out the incident and called the ambulance. Mr. Watkins was then pronounced dead at 2:11a.m, and Dean Burnett recorded the death was caused by trauma. Mr. Watkins’ daughter has said that he rarely wears a seatbelt while driving. Caroline Saunders, the head coroner of Gwent, concluded that the victim died of the road traffic collision. She also claimed that with a slower speed and protection of seatbelt, it will lighten the injuries, and this might save Mr. Watkins from death. The inquest also claimed that Mr. Watkins had been awake for almost 23 hours at the time, and he complained that he had been tired constantly to his GP. This was believed to be the main reason that caused this unfortunate incident to happen. The loss of Mr. Watkins has shattered the heart of his family and friends.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported there are approximately 100,000 car accidents happened every year, at least 40,000 and 1550 of fatalities were caused by drowsy driving. In most cases, the issue of “falling asleep driving” was not of great concern by the public and mass media. This causes people to be unaware of this issue and has no acknowledge about it. This short essay seeks to analyse how the media reports information about how falling asleep driving influence our attention.
The awareness of falling asleep driving is somehow “falling behind” the rest of other driving habits awareness. For instance, the awareness of over-speed driving and using a phone while driving is more common in our society. In this case, a farmer died whilst falling asleep driving home, the main spokespersons were Caroline Saunder and Dean Burnett, both Gwent Head Coroner and forensic collision investigator for the police of Gwent, followed by Mr. Watkins’ family. Mr. Burnett reported the findings of the forensic investigation into this accident and Ms. Saunders concluded that Mr. Watkins had died of a road traffic collision, while Mr. Watkins’ daughter stated the reason that might cause his father to death to the court. There are no eyewitnesses in this accident, however, the accident was found out by two passing drivers. The exact story of this case is therefore based on the results of Mr. Burnett’s investigation.
Research found out the causal factor in 1.2-1.6% of police-reported crashes and 3.6% of fatal accidents are due to drowsiness or fatigue. A study conducted by Lauber and Kayten between the general driver population and shift workers revealed that sleepiness-related driving is highly correlated with the working shifts. A higher prevalence of sleep-related motor vehicle crash was recorded among working individuals who work for more than 60 hours within a week, and work irregular hours at night. It was proposed that the probability of an MVC occurring for each extended shift in a month will be increased by 9.1%. This is because the lack of rest and an individual’s attention span has declined after a long working hour.
Sleep deprivation has been found to impair our cognitive abilities and performance. Research has also shown that an adult will need at least 7-8 hours of sleep per night, and with each hour of sleep lost, the risk of a drowsy driving increased by 9% as one is unable to pay attention when driving. Secondly, after driving over a period of time, fatigue has been found to increase, and total driving time showed a greater impact on the risk of accidents among drivers as the human attention span is meant to be limited. Jovanis, Kaneko, and Lin also found that there was a higher risk of incidents to occur during night-time.
The public and society should take some of the implications to address this issue. First, the government should construct more rest areas, especially for those long-distance highways. It helps the drivers to take a nap and refresh themselves from fatigue, and they can refocus on driving on the rest of the journey, as drowsy driving is putting everyone at risk. Research also showed that driving efficiency is typically weakened after 4 hours of driving. Thus, the more rest areas were built, the likelihood of drowsy driving can be greatly decreased and this can directly reduce the tendency of an accident to happen caused by fatigued drivers.
Next, the management of respective companies that required the use of transport, such as logistic company and travel agency that employed lorry or bus drivers, should set a regular work schedule for the drivers as research shows that the driving performance of truck drivers dropped with an irregular schedule. Lastly, people who are lack of sleep are advised not to drive to work, and they have another alternative way such as taking public transport or carpooling with colleagues to their workplace. People who have worked long shift can take a short nap after work, and before driving back home is another way to decrease the risk of falling asleep driving.
In summary, falling asleep driving is a serious matter which relates to every single one of us and it is worth paying attention in. Given the large number of cases on MVC, greater attention should be paid to increase the awareness of falling asleep driving. This problem has been undergoing for the past decade, and as a result of this, the media is playing an important role in getting this information and knowledge to the public.
