Falling asleep while driving...

[anxi80]

Originally posted by: ironwing
Once I drove from St Louis to Louisville in the dead of night. There is about one hundred miles of that trip for which I have no recollection.

freeway hypnosis. ive dealt with that many times. my commute to work used to be an hour and some change and one minute i was hopping on the freeway to start the trip and the next thing you know im pulling up at a light a mile away from my house.

Originally posted by: Rubycon
:music:

I'll learn to work the saxophone
I'll play just what I feel
Drink Scotch whisky all night long
And die behind the wheel
They got a name for the winners in the world
I want a name when I lose
They call Alabama the Crimson Tide
Call me Deacon Blues

Ah 1978 - good times!

ha, i thought of the same song when i saw the topic title. i could hear '...and die behind the wheel' as soon as i read it.

 

[GeekDrew]

I have.

 

[BALIstik916]

why christian did you fall asleep while driving?

 

[rpanic]

I have fallen asleep 5 or 6 times when I use to work crazy hours. T-boned a chick, and woke up driving in the emergency lane going 10mph on the freeway once. One time I thought I was driving a forklift. The sad thing is when it happened I was so tired I didn?t even think of pulling over and knocking out for a bit.

 

[Jeff7]

Just once my head started to nod a bit, and it scared the hell out of me. I've never driven tired like that again.
Driving tired? You might as well be drunk.

 

[rpanic]

Originally posted by: Jeff7
Just once my head started to nod a bit, and it scared the hell out of me. I've never driven tired like that again.
Driving tired? You might as well be drunk.

Its far worse than being drunk.

 

[RedCOMET]

I did it to day. almost falling asleep at the wheel. i drove about 500 miles today.


there was one time, where i seemed to fallen asleep at stop ligths. like, i get to the light, black out then, wake up and its green.

 

[soydios]

senior year of high school, I drove 20 miles each way, every day. I also convinced myself that I could function on 4 hours of sleep on weeknights. that was a bad combination, but I never got in an accident, luckily for me and everyone else.

 

[jagec]

Originally posted by: Auric
Deceptive title. I was expecting purposely closing for the giggles which I must admit to doing occasionally when there is no other traffic.

Ever turned your headlights off? It's amazing...you can actually drive perfectly well on ambient light (Don't do this in the mountains or when it's cloudy). In a sense you actually see even better without your headlights, since you're not blinded by the nearby pavement, so visibility extends quite a bit further. But no one can see YOU, so I don't recommend it.

I haven't nodded off while driving, but I have done something worse.

I had been driving some CRAZY amount...Seattle->Indiana->Maine->NYC->South Carolina, visiting friends. Anyway, me and a friend (who had no license) were pulled over at a rest stop, sleeping in the car. I was in the driver's seat, he in the front passenger's. Some odd hour in the morning, I half-wake up in a panic, convinced that I was stopped with all the lights off in the middle of the freeway. "We're going to get hit!", I thought, "I have to find a place to pull over where it's safe!" and so I scrambled to pull out the keys. I started the car, backed out of our parking spot (I don't know what was going through my head at this point), and started to drive down the freeway entrance ramp, squinting through the fogged-up windshield, with my conscious mind still out of it, still somewhat panicked. Finally I...came aware...and realized what I was doing. My friend woke up a little and asked something, and I said some sort of BS about moving the car. Then I backed up, re-parked in a spot, and from then on I hid the keys any time I was sleeping in the car.

So there you have it. I've never fallen asleep while driving, but I have driven in my sleep.

 

[nageov3t]

once, and I'd never put myself through something like that again.

woke up at 3 am west coast time after 3-4 hours of sleep, caught a plane to state college, pa, and then spent 4 hours on the road driving to my parents' house.

me and the girl I was with were struggling to stay awake the whole way down 80. we were broke and just wanted to get home, but in retrospect, we really should have waited till the following day to go back home instead of going straight from the airport.

 

[Ika]

I do this all the time. I've never actually fallen asleep, just gone through bouts of microsleep. I once drove through 15 exits on the highway (including the one I was supposed to get off at) without knowing it.

 

[everman]

Not exactly, but I have arrived at my destination without really remembering much of the drive there. Not asleep, just on auto pilot.

 

[ViRGE]

I'd just like to say this thread scares the hell out of me. I'll fully admit I don't make the kind of long trips you guys make and such have never had to experience driving while drowsy, but the poll results are staggering. If these kinds of numbers are normal for the population as a whole, perhaps we have a systematic problem? The risk is too great, this shouldn't be happening.

 

[tasmanian]

Ive dozed off a couple of times. I instantly wake up though.

 

[m1ldslide1]

Originally posted by: Aflac
I do this all the time. I've never actually fallen asleep, just gone through bouts of microsleep. I once drove through 15 exits on the highway (including the one I was supposed to get off at) without knowing it.

I had to hear all about microsleep in my drivers safety classes for work. Apparently almost everybody is sleep-deprived, and so therefore suffers from microsleep. It can be a second or two, and is a very common cause for accidents. Usually people have no idea that they were even microsleeping at the time. There's also the whole "I don't remember the last four miles" thing, which I've done many times. It doesn't feel like dozing, just like I can't remember it. It's also a sign of sleep deprivation and means that you were more likely to get in an accident during that period.

There's a chart somewhere that relates sleep deprivation to shots of alcohol. Once you've been up for like 20 hours, you're well past .08 IIRC, and it increases almost exponentially after that. Usually people who are drinking do it late at night, and are just piling on the effects.


<------ drowsy many times, nearly nodding many times. I open the windows, crank the stereo, pinch/whack myself, and it all just seems to barely keep me going. I hate that feeling. Sometimes you don't feel like you have other options if you're trying to get somewhere or are on a freeway in the middle of nowhere. Maybe we'll all learn better as we get older.

 

[RaistlinZ]

I once worked on Saturday, then drove up to Vegas for a concert at 8pm, then tried to drive back after the concert was over. I had to pull over part of the way back and nap for about 30 minutes.

 

[0roo0roo]

never fell asleep, but the thought that i "could" just close my eyes and drift off was a tempting and constant torture. its a rather sucky situation to be in.

 

[TheVrolok]

I've never actually fallen asleep, but I've definitely gotten the drowsy eyes closing for a split second thing. I usually (if possible), pull over and just do a lap or two around my car. Moving around a bit usually wakes me up enough to finish the drive.

 

[Scouzer]

Once. It was extremely terrifying.

 

[olds]

For the past month or so, I have been doing it almost nightly.
One night about a dozen times.

 

[olds]

Just remembered a time when I was stationed in Germany.
A friend and I rented a car and went down to Kitzbuhel Austria for some skiing.
We made friends with a bartender and our last day there she kept buying us drinks. My friend started out driving but was way to drunk, so I drove.
He passed out almost immediately as we headed north. We had to be back in the morning or we would be AWOL so I drove straight through the night.
I fell asleep a couple of times only to open my eyes and see we were 2 feet from the back of a big rig. I guess I was following him. My friend woke up long enough to puke out the window, down the side of the car and then went back to sleep.
I have no idea how we made it back alive but we were there for PT at 5:00 AM.

The Londoner
Kitzbuhel
Route

 

[Alistar7]

More than once, worse case I woke up "driving" in the grass median.

 

[theprodigalrebel]

I've pulled into my driveway on several occasions and had no idea how I got there. "Wait, I was at work, I remember going down to the parking lot...what happened then? Which route did I take home today?"

Mind registers a complete blank and I shake a little. It has happened more than once. Scary shit, I know.

 

[marvdmartian]

I honestly don't know which of these episodes (in my youth, luckily, and many many years behind me!!) were more scary:

1. Nodding off at the wheel, drifting over to the left til I hit the rumble strip, jerking the wheel to the right (subconciously?), and waking up to the scene of my car hurtling toward the right shoulder of the highway at ~70mph
-or-
2. Drinking so much that although I didn't pass out, I did pass out of what I call "high conciousness" as I pulled out of the bar parking lot, then "coming to" half way home.....with no recollection of having driven that distance, and whether I'd hit anyone/anything during that time (believe me, I checked my car's undercarriage later on that day!!).

Nowadays, I probably drink no more than 3 or 4 drinks a year, and pull over for a rest break (usually a motel for the night) if I'm feeling fatigued. One of the benefits of being older and a bit more money in the bank then when I was younger!

 

[moshquerade]

never. i never put myself in that position.