AAA says one in five fatal crashes involve drowsy driving

TWIN FALLS, Idaho (KMVT/KSVT) — As the daylight hours continue to get longer as we approach summer many people are pushing themselves longer without sleep and that is causing more driving accidents than previously thought.

AAA of Idaho said one in five fatal accidents involves some form of drowsy driving.

Mathew Conde, with AAA, told KMVT people need to be honest with themselves when driving if they are tired to pull off the road.

AAA recently did a study where they took people in a test situation where they got people drowsy and put them behind a driving simulator. The test subjects were asked to rate their level of drowsiness, finding that many people who said they were not drowsy were very drowsy.

“And we saw also that one in four people that said, ‘I’m totally fine’ they actually had their eyes closed for 15 seconds out of every minute,” said Conde. “Which means a quarter of the time they were completely unaware of what was happening on the road in from of them on this simulator.”

Conde added that caffeine and listening to the radio loudly are no substitutions for getting at least seven hours of sleep per night.

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