Washington, D.C., April 21, 2006 ─ The landmark driver behavior study released yesterday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) provides important new evidence that drowsy driving is a serious and underestimated threat to public safety.
The National Sleep Foundation (NSF) commends NHTSA and VTTI for this valuable research, which uniquely measured real-world driver behavior through video and sensor devices on 100 vehicles over the course of one year. Researchers found that nearly 80% of crashes and 65% of near-crashes recorded involved some type of "driver inattention" within three seconds before the event, and that drowsy driving was by far the leading cause of driver inattention.
"This important research illustrates the potentially dire consequences that can occur while driving distracted or drowsy. It’s crucial that drivers always be alert when on the road," said Jacqueline Glassman, acting administrator of NHTSA.
Moderate or severe drowsiness was cited as a factor in 22-24% of the crashes and near-crashes, with cell phone use being the second most-cited factor at 7.2%, followed by reading at about 3%. In their conclusion, researchers note that drowsy driving "is a significant problem that increases a driver’s risk of a crash or near-crash by four to six times” and that it “may be significantly underreported in police crash investigations."
In NSF’s recent Sleep in America polls, 60% of adult drivers and 51% of teenage drivers reported driving drowsy at least once a year. In fact, 14% of adults and 15% of teens said they drive drowsy at least once a week. In addition, 37% of adults and 5% of teens said they had nodded off or fallen asleep at the wheel within the past year.
NSF Senior Director of Government Affairs and Programs Darrel Drobnich notes that "the NHTSA/VTTI study confirms that drowsy driving is a ‘silent killer’ and that there need to be new efforts related to education, engineering and enforcement to track and combat it. For instance, there is little police training for identifying drowsiness as a crash factor, and reporting practices are inconsistent from state to state."
According to research now more than a decade old, NHTSA conservatively estimated that 100,000 police-reported crashes are the direct result of driver fatigue each year, resulting in an estimated 1,550 deaths, 71,000 injuries and $12.5 billion in monetary losses. For many years, however, most traffic safety and sleep experts have had the opinion that drowsy driving is much more common. The federal statistics were derived mostly from police reports and at least 10 states did not have proper codes for fatigue on report forms at the time. Today, only the State of Massachusetts does not have a code for fatigue or fall-asleep crashes.
NSF has been combating drowsy driving since 1993 through its Drive Alert…Arrive Alive campaign. NSF encourages state and federal agencies to join it and other partners in increasing public awareness about the dangers of drowsy driving and its underlying causes such as poor sleep habits, nighttime and long work hours, sedating medications, and untreated sleep disorders.
In particular, NSF urges state governments to act on the authority provided under last year’s Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU). This law gives states authority to provide additional highway safety programs – including those specifically designed to counter drowsy driving – for their residents. Under SAFETEA-LU, NSF encourages states to take the following steps now to address the problem of drowsy driving:
1. Incorporate information on driver fatigue and countermeasures in existing state driver safety publications and programs, such as those aimed at drunk driving and drug use prevention.
2. Create a program safety position to initiate and implement drowsy driving education programs statewide and targeted to high risk populations.
3. Train enforcement personnel in the detection of drowsy driving crashes and adopt uniform codes on motor vehicle crash report forms to record fatigue-related crashes.
4. Adopt formal policy statements for the implementation of continuous shoulder rumble strips along all suitable highways.
5. Require that drowsy driving curricula and information be included in driver education classes, licensing manuals and tests.
6. Partner with existing national programs – such as NSF’s National Sleep Awareness Week (March 5-11, 2007) and its Drive Alert… Arrive Alive program – to disseminate information regarding drowsy driving and driver fatigue.
For more information about prevention, the signs of fatigue and what drivers should do at the first sense of drowsiness, visit NSF’s Web site dedicated to the prevention of driver fatigue at www.drowsydriving.org.
The National Sleep Foundation (NSF) is an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to improving public health and safety by achieving greater understanding of sleep and sleep disorders. NSF furthers its mission through sleep-related education, research, and advocacy initiatives. NSF’s membership includes researchers and clinicians focused on sleep medicine as well as other professionals in the health/medical/science fields, individuals, and more than 700 sleep clinics throughout North America that join the Foundation’s Community Sleep Awareness Partners program. NSF can be found online at www.sleepfoundation.org
Learn more:
* See the “Impact of Driver Inattention on Near-Crash/Crash Risk Report” [PDF]
* Get an overview of the 100-Car Naturalistic Study and Findings [PDF]
* Visit www.drowsydriving.org to learn more about fatigue-related crashes
