The Negative Effects Of Sleep Deprivation And Fatued Driving

Sleep-deprived driving also known as fatigued driving is the operation of a motor vehicle whilst under the cognitive impairment of sleep deficiency. This deprivation commits a significant toll on the body and can adversely affect performance in driving. It has been estimated that approximately 20% of vehicle accidents are attributed to fatigued driving, with over 72,000 crashes and 800 deaths recorded annually in the US (CDC, 2015). Consequently, this essay will argue that sleep deprivation substantially interferes with driving performance due to its various adverse cognitive implications. This argument will be supported by empirical evidence obtained from two separate studies which show that as people become deprived of sleep; reaction speed,

The first article written by Williamson and Feyer (2000) examines an experiment conducted to compare the relative impacts on performance due to induced fatigue by sleep deprivation and alcohol consumption. The experiment was conducted with induced fatigue as the independent variable (IV), which comprised of two levels; sleep deprivation and alcohol consumption. This was then manipulated to determine the effects on the dependent variable which was given by a performance value specific to the task being done such as speed and accuracy. Eight tests previously shown to have sensitivity to the effects of fatigue were administered on a computer screen with a standard mouse and keyboard to measure the subject’s cognitive performances. The study consisted of thirty-nine randomly selected volunteers from a road transport company (thirty subjects) and the transport corps of the Australian army (nine subjects) of which thirty-seven were male and 2 were female. The experiment was conducted in a laboratory with half of the subjects commencing with alcohol consumption tests and the other half doing the sleep deprivation tests first (counterbalanced testing). Prior to testing, subjects performed 4 hours of practice sessions to prepare for the experiment. Two hours after waking the next morning testing started for both the sleep deprivation and

The experiment was carried out with sleep deprivation and age as the two independent variables, each consisting of two levels. The first variable consisted of sleep deprived and rested subjects as the levels, and the second variable consisted of young individuals and older individuals as the levels. This was then utilized to determine the effects of two different sets of measures classified as the dependent variables. These consisted of reaction time (RT) measured via a simple RT test on a PALM personal organizer as well as the self-assessment of performance and wakefulness calculated from the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (KSS). The study consisted of ten healthy young males (aged 20-25) and ten healthy older males (aged 52-63) that were both tested with and without twenty-four hours of sleep deprivation. The experiment was conducted in a laboratory with half of the subjects from each group commencing in tests without sleep deprivation and the other half with sleep deprivation (counterbalanced testing). Rested subjects began testing one hour after waking and sleep deprived participants commenced twelve hours after waking with both proceeding to perform tests every 2 hours;