That’s why they created the ‘Sam Wooly – Sleep Expert’ video.

We are not kidding.

As you know, drowsy driving causes more than 100,000 crashes a year, resulting in 40,000 injuries and 1,550 deaths. As tragic as these numbers are, they only tell a portion of the story. It is widely recognized that drowsy driving is underreported as a cause of crashes. And this doesn’t include incidents caused by driver inattention.

In 1996, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) embarked on an effort to reduce the effects that fatigue and driver inattention have on highway safety. While everyone is susceptible to drowsy-driving crashes, shift workers run a particularly high risk. Their natural sleep patterns are disrupted by working nights or long and irregular hours.

In collaboration with National Center on Sleep Disorders Research (NCSDR), NHTSA developed an education program to increase shift workers’ awareness of the dangers of drowsy driving, help them to improve the quality of their sleep and reduce sleepiness, and ultimately, reduce the incidence of drowsy driving.

From their website:

This comprehensive program is specifically designed for businesses and organizations like yours that employ workers beyond the typical “9 to 5″ workday. Program materials include a Better Sleep Video, Workplace Posters, Shift Worker Brochure, Tip Card, Employer Administrator’s Guide with PowerPoint Training Sessions, and a Brochure for Shift Work Families. The program will not only help you reduce on-the-job risks, but improve the productivity and quality of life of your employees as well. Descriptions of the program materials follow. Take a look and decide which materials will work best for your organization.

The program is available for order here.

The SafeTraK LDW system features a monocular camera mounted on the truck’s windshield to monitor lane markings. The system alerts the driver with an audible warning if the vehicle is veering into another lane or if there’s any degraded or erratic driving behavior within the lane. Freescale collaborated with Takata in the development of the monocular system, providing critical microelectronic components. The system incorporates Freescale’s 16-bit S12 microcontroller (MCU) and an MCZ33810 analog output driver IC. Takata’s SafeTraK 3 system is in production now and shipping to heavy truck manufacturers and fleet operators worldwide.

“We’ve designed our new SafeTraK 3 system to address the majority of fatal crash types involving driver fatigue and other instances where drivers fail to stay in their lane,” said Dave Martin, SafeTraK account manager at Takata Electronics. “Collaborating with Freescale and using their advanced silicon technology has made our latest lane departure warning system even more robust, providing truck drivers with an additional safety control measure designed to help save lives.”

Takata said its SafeTraK 3 LDW system is a single-box design that simplifies installation and offers improved performance compared to previous LDW models. In addition to lane detection warning features, SafeTraK 3 includes a new “drowsy driver” warning system designed to detect erratic or degraded driving based on weaving behavior associated with driver drowsiness. Takata’s SafeTraK 3 LDW system is designed to address crash types that account for 70 percent of fatal crashes, while also reducing accident costs for the commercial trucking industry.

The SafeTraK 3 System is designed to meet stringent automotive and commercial truck performance standards and certifications, such as IS0 14001, ISO 9001/2000 and TS 16949. SafeTraK 3 systems are shipped to customers only after all of the industry certification and testing criteria are met.

The condition is most often seen in people who work outside the standard framework of a 9 to 5 schedule or who change their work or sleep schedules frequently or work longterm on other than the day shift.

The most disastrous side effect is the sleepy or ‘drowsy driver’.

Two of the scariest data points come from U Penn and Liberty Mutual:
- 36% of teens admit to driving drowsy on a regular basis
- 55% of fatigue-related crashes involve drivers under 25

As a result of years of education, teenage drivers are aware of the risks of alcohol-impaired driving and are much less likely to drive under the influence of alcohol than are non-teen adults. Unfortunately, teens don’t recognize the dangers of drowsy driving.

Another study done by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and State Farm Insurance Company (Driving: Through the Eyes of Teens) found that three-fourths of teens reported seeing their peers driving while fatigued. The research surveyed 5,665 ninth, tenth and eleventh grade students representative of all 10.6 million public school students in grades nine through eleven.

According to The National Sleep Foundation, teenagers are going thru so many chemical changes in their bodies, plus after-school jobs and online socializing makes it impossible for them to get to sleep before 11 PM and have the required amount of sleep necessary to properly function.

We highly recommend you watch the story on Today below:

As first reported by WWLTV, Morvant defended his decision, explaining he would have needed information indicating Pham knowingly put others in danger in order to charge her with negligent homicide.

Pham plead guilty to driving left of center – her mini-van struck a Ford Focus driven by Dawn Graham which also held her youngest children, 10-year-old Stacie and 8-year-old Bryan Jr., all of which died in the crash.

The family considered suing Pham for civil damages but instead, have worked with the National Sleep Foundation and its Web site, http://drowsydriving.org, in hopes that states will tighten laws against drowsy drivers who cause traffic fatalities.

A drowsy driver clipped the back end of a car on I-215 Wednesday morning, sending it spinning off the road.

Utah Highway Patrol says the man who caused the crash told troopers he’d just gotten off a graveyard shift and must have fallen asleep.

Video Courtesy of KSL.com

WITN put forth the numbers that everyone is talking about:

Drowsy Driving accounts for 1,000 crashes and 1,500 deaths each year.

They also reported on a study, done at the sleep disorder center n Detroit, which shows the most common reasons for chronic insomnia are stressful events such as financial stress and that these sleepy drivers are tired from working a second job.

As reported on WCTV, Ronshay Dugans lost her life last year after a cement truck slammed into the back of the Boys and Girls club bus she was riding on. The driver of the cement truck was fatigued and now the family wants to prevent this tragedy from happening again.

State Representative Allen Williams presented the family with the resolution passed by the Florida Legislature that establishes the week in her honor. The Ronshay Dugans Drowsy Drivers Week is designed to bring awareness about the dangers of driving while fatigued.

In a city where work can border on obsession, the Obama staffers stand out. They are not quite the walking dead, but their eyes are frequently ringed with the bags that accompany exhaustion.

“This is a place, because of the stress, the schedule and the sheer hours, that just chews people up and spits them out,” said press secretary Robert Gibbs, whose alarm clock is set to 4:30 a.m., though he ignores the early ring more often these days.

A study conducted for British Parliament concluded that the mental fatigue resulting from working those kinds of hours can affect “cognitive performance, leading to errors of judgment, microsleeps (lasting for seconds or minutes), mood swings and poor motivation,” according to the Post.

Read more at the Washington Post

Police have not yet determined the cause of the accident. However, many traffic accidents in the early-morning hours can be blamed, in part, on drowsy driving. About 100,000 reportable accidents annually are caused by driver fatigue. These crashes cause 1,550 deaths, 71,000 injuries, and $12.5 billion in monetary losses, according to the National Sleep Foundation’s drowsydriving.org Web site.

Read details here

Last Tuesday night, a 19 year-old died after being thrown from his car.

More details here