Wake-Up Call For Drowsy Jersey Drivers

from the it's-the-law dept

For all those discussions about how bad driving while talking is, New Jersey has decided to take on one other major cause of accidents: driving while drowsy is now illegal in the Garden State. I remember, years back, learning about sleep deprivation in a psychology class I took, where the professor made it clear that driving while drowsy is even more dangerous than driving while drunk. Of course, unlike drunk driving, there's no Breathalyzer equivalent (the sleepalizer?) to test how "drowsy" a driver is. Thus, I don't really see how anyone could enforce such a law. The rule seems to be that it's illegal to drive if you haven't slept in 24 hours, and you can also face criminal charges if you're caught asleep at the wheel. Still sounds pretty tough to prove. However, the article includes some scary stats, including the fact that 17% of drivers surveyed claim they've fallen asleep at the wheel in the previous year. That number sounds ridiculously high.
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  1. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 6 Aug 2003 @ 1:59am

    Trucker Alley

    Shouldn't surprise you at all, given its location as an East Coast artery for I-95. If you grew up back East, you've heard the cliche about asking NJ residents "which exit do you live off of?" We can't have sleepy truckers squashing NJ-ites left and right.


    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Glenn, 6 Aug 2003 @ 7:31am

    Doctors

    My understanding is that doctors-to-be, as part of their training and residency, regularly do 24 hour or longer shifts. While I don't really envision a scenario where a whole bunch of doctors are ticketed/arrested for sleepy driving, you gotta wonder if the ruling would hold in that scenario.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 6 Aug 2003 @ 8:00am

    Re: Doctors

    What I want to know is, if it's not okay to merely drive while drowsy, why is it okay for a doctor to practice medicine in these marathon sessions while sleep-deprived?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 6 Aug 2003 @ 9:06am

    Re: Doctors

    Its' ok for doctors because the AMA is one of the
    top donators to political candidates, and wields
    a lot of clout in governmental circles. The AMA
    can instill a lot of fear in pols.

    Your basic truck driving guy doesn't.

    Besides, I think just recently the AMA changed
    its attitude on the slave-driving residency
    programs, limiting time to 80 hours a week for
    interns. I don't know if this has taken effect county-wide yet or only in certain locales.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 6 Aug 2003 @ 10:09am

    Re: Doctors

    The 80-hour rule has been there for a long time, throughout the country. Enforcement is lax, however.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. identicon
    jack, 25 Apr 2008 @ 4:37am

    traffic

    accidents is un avoiding thinks in today world bcz of heavy traffic. ================ jack Put The Message Where It Matters! WideCircles aka Wide Circles represents relevant, distributed, highly targeted and efficient internet word of mouth marketing using entertaining or informative messages that are designed to be passed along in an exponential fashion using social network mediums such as blogs, forums, wikis and so on. http://widecircles.com

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