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Have you ever had a micro sleep?
Author: Jonathan Warren
A worrying statistic has been revealed, showing that micro sleep may be a more dangerous phenomenon that we could ever have thought. Simply, micro sleep is when you drop off for just five to ten seconds before waking with a start. It's usually not until you awake that you're even aware that you've fallen asleep.
According to the BBC, road safety charity Brake interviewed 1,000 drivers. Of this group, 22 per cent of women and a staggering 45 per cent of men admitted to micro sleeping whilst driving.
"Your eyelids start drooping and you start to lose contact with reality. With micro sleep, you are just left with a feeling of not knowing if you're coming or going." comments Professor Jim Horne, director of the Sleep Research Centre at Loughborough University.
These are obviously not ideal driving conditions, and risk the lives of your passengers and other drivers as well as your own. Caused by fatigue – unsurprisingly – the best way to prevent micro sleeps when driving is to stay topped up with caffeine, according to the Highway Code. Around 150mg of caffeine will take roughly twenty minutes to begin to work, so it's recommended that you pull over to a safe area and have a fifteen minute nap and a five minute wake-up period before carrying on with your journey.
"Sleep doesn't come from out of the blue. You can't be driving along alert one minute and falling asleep the next. There's always adequate time to realise how sleepy you are," Horne adds.
When driving, particularly when tackling distances and monotonous motorways, be aware of how you're feeling. Don't let time pressure you into continuing past the point where you feel like you really do need a rest – it's surely better to arrive at your destination late than not at all.
Have you ever had a micro sleep?
Have you ever had a micro sleep?
