By Kristen Radford
Jill McAuley hadn''t realized she was so tired when she started her drive home to Woodinville, Wash., from Rexburg where she''d been attending BYU-Idaho. A clear afternoon in May, 2000, McAuley never anticipated falling asleep on the freeway and crashing her car into the median.
'I didn''t even think about it,' said McAuley, now a 25-year-old BYU student. 'I was obviously really tired and it wasn''t a good situation to put myself in. I don''t even remember trying to fight it off. It just came on so quickly.'
McAuley''s car flipped several times, breaking her neck and requiring a three-month recuperation in a Seattle hospital. McCauley is now a quadriplegic. Like many students, she overestimated her own ability to drive safely despite her fatigue.
'I didn''t even really think about the fact that I was probably exhausted,' McAuley said. 'I just had a lot of adrenaline and excitement because I was going home. I just didn''t have enough.'
Fatigue can be just as fatal as drug and alcohol consumption when it comes to highway safety. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, more than 100,000 police-reported crashes each year are the result of drowsy driving. These accidents result in an estimated 1,550 deaths, 71,000 injuries, and $12.5 billion in monetary losses.
And yet the problem persists. According to the Nation Sleep Foundation, a non-profit group aimed at alerting the public of the importance of sleep, 60 percent of Americans say they have driven a vehicle while feeling drowsy in the past year. Of those, 37 percent report to have actually fallen asleep at the wheel.
Stephanie Fugal, a part-time faculty member in BYU''s Department of Health Sciences, said drowsy driving can especially be problematic among college students. In the fall of 1998, Fugal was part of a club within the Department of Health Sciences that campaigned for a release of classes on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. The club distributed T-shirts reading 'Better to be late to St. George than early to St. Peter' in order to alert students of the perils of driving while sleepy. After multiple presentations and the distribution of statistical reports, the university extended the Thanksgiving holiday.
But holidays are not the only threat against drowsy driving for students. Late nights, early classes and active social lives chronically deprive many students of healthy sleep habits. And without adequate sleep, drowsy driving can endanger a student''s life on a daily basis. According to a study performed by the British Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, drivers who had been awake for 17 or more hours performed worse on the road than drivers with a blood alcohol level of .05 percent.
'Young people think that they are invincible in a sense and this contributes to their driving when they are tired,' said Sydney Riding, an intern in the Department of Health Sciences. 'There is this stigma of ''I''m young and in shape and I should have all of this energy and I should be able to stay up as late as I want with no problem.'' Little do they know this invincible quality is a facade. They are human and they need just as much sleep as the next person, if not more due to their rigorous schedules.'
The risks of driving while sleep deprived do not end with the threat of falling asleep. According to the National Sleep Foundation, sleepiness can cause impaired reaction time, judgment and vision. In addition, sleep deprivation can cause a lack in short-term memory and impaired mental processing.
'Even if you don''t fall asleep, when you drive drowsy you drive impaired,' Dr. David F. Dinges, a sleep specialist at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, told the New York Times. 'Your reaction time is slowed, your perception is distorted and you don''t stay in your lane as easily.'
Many students use futile precautionary measure to keep awake on the road, Dinges also said. Drinking caffeine, listening to loud music and rolling the windows down will not diminish sleepiness. A short nap or a good night''s sleep are the only true methods of prevention, Dinges said.