What’s more dangerous than DUI? Driving sleep deprived.
What’s more dangerous than DUI? Driving sleep deprived.
The best method to avoid crashes might just be to try getting the recommended seven to eight hours of sleep each night. The answer to the question, what’s more dangerous than DUI, amazingly, is driving without enough sleep.
“the crash risk of a driver who has slept for only four to five of the past 24 hours is approximately quadruple the risk of a driver who has slept for the expert-recommended minimum of seven hours, similar to the crash risk of a driver who is legally intoxicated relative to a sober driver,”
Some experts have noted that the new study has some limitations, such as not including data on vehicle crashes between midnight and 6 a.m. and analyzing how only a lack of sleep in the past 24 hours was associated with crash risk, rather than quality of sleep, which may be even more important.
- drivers who had slept for less than four hours had 11½ times the crash risk rate of drivers who had slept seven hours or more;
- drivers who had four to five hours of sleep had 4.3 times the risk; those who had five to six hours had 1.9 times the risk; and
- those who had six to seven hours had 1.3 times the risk.
