You often hear people talk about the dangers of drowsy driving. This is especially true with truck drivers and commercial drivers, who may feel like they have to keep driving due to their schedules even when they feel very tired, but it impacts everyone. A student on the way to school or a worker coming home from the office; anyone can cause an accident if they’re too tired.
These conversations may center around important topics like drivers who push it too far, who do not get enough sleep or who drive late at night when they should have driven in the afternoon. These are big issues, but they ignore one potential complication: Sometimes it feels like the road itself is lulling you to sleep.
It may begin with a condition often called “highway hypnosis.” This is when the drive turns mundane and boring, according to a professor who studied it, and so the driver sort of zones out. When they snap back to attention, they may realize that they’ve gone miles without remembering the road, the turns or the cars around them.
When this goes a step further, the driver can actively nod off. This may happen because of how bored the driver feels, because of the steady repetition of the lines on the road, because of the soft hum of the tires and for many other reasons. All of this is very calming — parents know all too well how children tend to sleep in the car — and it can cause a driver to drift toward sleep.
Those who get injured in accidents caused by these drowsy drivers must know how to seek compensation.
