The fatigue stop at the Ruakākā straight on State Highway 1 has been running for almost 30 years now. Photo / NZME
On the day before each public holiday, Northland Road Safety Association runs a fatigue stop at the Ruakākā straight on State Highway 1.
They have been doing this for almost 30 years now.
The stops have evolved from a pretty rudimentary affair, to now being a highly professionally managed event, where hundreds of drivers stop and take a break, before continuing their journey.
Last month, the Australian Government promoted a National Driver Fatigue Week to highlight the issue which is a contributing factor in 20% of Australian road fatalities.
A fatigue-related crash could happen to any of us, so recognising driver fatigue is a smart thing to do.
One of the saddest descriptions I have heard in recent times is of a young woman who went to sleep at the wheel at 1am.
She went off the end of a straight piece of road on State Highway 1 near Whangārei, and drove straight into a tree.
She had phoned her partner from Auckland two hours earlier, who urged her to stay the night and not drive.
She had an hour left in her journey when she dropped off.
No skid marks and at full speed, into a tree. She was found next morning, seat belt buckled with hardly a mark on her, where a burst aorta had put her permanently to sleep.
She had a good driving record but she just made one bad driving decision.
It is widely accepted that fatigue is significantly under-reported in official crash data, but international research has found that 20% of crashes involved fatigue.
The most definitive work in this was done in a 100-car Naturalistic Driving study by Virginia Tech Transportation Institute in the United States.
This study involves unobtrusive video and recording equipment being placed in 100 cars driven by volunteers and left there for up to a year.
The studies have now been run for over 35 years and they study what drivers do in their natural driving day. They have recorded millions of hours of real-life driving behaviour and confirm the fatigue-related 20% crash statistic.
These studies have been used to observe various driving behaviours, including driving after cannabis use.
The VTTI studies found that a moderately fatigued driver was six times more likely to be involved in a crash, which is nearly the same as a drunk driver at seven times. Dr Alex Bartle from New Zealand’s Sleep Well Clinics, concurs that 18 hours without sleep is equivalent to 80 to 100mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood, almost twice the legal limit for driving.
Fatigue slows reaction time, impairs decision-making, increases risk-taking and faulty judgment.
When we are sleep deprived, we are potentially lethal on the road because we drift off and are unable to brake or lessen the impact in any way.
Many drivers think they are bulletproof and doggedly resist the personal signs of fatigue. Your eyelids get heavy, you blink more, you yawn and you daydream.
You get a stiff neck or you drift off in your lane, and for some reason or other you are always hurrying when on the road.
Stopping for a break has got to be the smartest option, and the practice which is subject to increasing research is the Power Nap.
As a youngster, I was always puzzled by my father’s practice of what he called a “snooze” after lunch.
This lasted about 20 minutes, then, as a farmer, he was up and away again. For him, it was a part of his routine, but very recent research indicates the significant benefits of this power nap.
These include better creativity and lateral thinking, reduced stress, greater alertness and productivity, improved memory and learning, better sleep and overall better health.
The secret, it seems, is a maximum of 20 minutes where you consciously close your eyes and nod off. It isn’t long enough to go into deep sleep from which you might wake up feeling groggy and worse than before, but it is long enough to give your brain a rest.
The trouble is that many of us don’t feel that we can take time to nap. There is a psychological issue of feeling guilty, or being seen as lazy or uncommitted. But it’s smart to put aside that guilt, and confirm it’s okay to take a break.
Some experts recommend a caffeine power nap. Caffeine is a stimulant which takes about 30 minutes to assimilate. The proposal is the cup of coffee and then the nap, so that the caffeine snaps you out of it at the end.
Overall, we need to recognise when we are drowsy on the road, and take a conscious decision to take a break. Otherwise, we might have the unconscious non-decision, which might put us permanently to sleep.