Sleep researchers Rachael Muck, PhD, and Hans Van Dongen, PhD, were featured in an article on the hazards of drowsy driving in Slate, a national magazine covering current affairs and culture.
If you’re feeling sleepy, you should stay off the road, experts say. It’s not just the risk of falling asleep at the wheel—drowsiness impairs your performance. One in five fatal crashes per year in the U.S. involve a drowsy driver, the article notes.
Muck explains that sleep loss affects vigilant attention and attentional control, two cognitive domains that are key for our ability to drive. Vigilant attention enables us to keep our focus over long periods of time, and attentional control helps us focus on specific stimuli amid an onslaught of information
Most of us are poor judges of our own fatigue, studies show, but Van Dongen notes we can predict drowsiness based on the time of day, how long we’ve been awake, and how long we’ve been driving. He has helped develop systems that predict airline pilots’ fatigue to improve flight safety. Apps are in development to bring similar technology to drivers.
Muck is a postdoctoral research associate and Van Dongen a professor in the WSU Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine’s Department of Translational Medicine and Physiology. Both are members of the WSU Sleep and Performance Research Center. Muck earned her PhD in neuroscience at WSU.