Falling asleep at the wheel.

[Jocko]

Have any of you ever fallen asleep at the wheel and are prepared to admit to it?
I have. I was heading east along the M8 on a nice summer evening. The road was quiet. I had just finished a 12 hour shift, but I didn't feel tired and was looking forward to getting home for my dinner.
I was driving my Vauxhall Cavalier (automatic but no cruise control) in lane one, when suddenly I experienced what felt like an electric shock and I woke to find myself in lane two. It was a frightening experience. No warning. No inclination I was feeling drowsy.
I regularly used to drive home after 12 hour night shifts, but the roads were always busy then and you had to keep your wits about you.
One of my colleagues, doing the same thing, was stuck in traffic, on the M8, in the centre of Glasgow. The traffic started to move, but a car was stationary in the centre lane. As she passed it she saw that the driver was fast asleep at the wheel! Obviously the delay had been too much for him.

[VicW]

I'll admit to falling asleep at the wheel.
When I was stationed at RAF Leuchars in Fife I stayed in Glenrothes and night shifts often extended to 14 hours. On more than one occasion I would suddenly realise that I couldn't remember driving the last couple of hundred yards, it was a blank!
It only happened in the winter when it was still dark o'clock.

Vic.

[Jocko]

I think that is slightly different. I worked at Donibristle (now Hillend Industrial Estate), and travelled in from Burntisland for a 6am start every morning. Some mornings there wasn't another soul on the road, and like you I would think, "I cannot remember coming through Aberdour". I know I hadn't fallen asleep, because it happened even on the motor bike. I think it was just the fact it was repetition and nothing stuck out to differentiate that morning from any other.
Its like getting in the house then thinking, "Did I lock the garage door". I always do, it is just nothing "sticks" to make it memorable.
Leuchars to Glenrothes is a nice run when the weather is fine, but a pig on a winters morning, early doors.

[VicW]

What was unpleasant Jocko was when the har came in in the early hours. Broad daylight but the har was just about car bonnet level above the road so you could see perfectly well but couldn't see the road !
The har was responsible for messing up many a flying programme first thing in the morning.

Vic.

[peteo48]

I had a very early warning of the perils of falling asleep at the wheel. It was 1968 - I was 19 and hadn't long passed my driving test. I was driving from Anglesey back to the Manchester area and those were the days before the tunnel at Conwy and the A55 North Wales Express way. It had taken over 2 hours to negotiate Conwy and I was on a stretch of dual carriageway near St Asaph. I nodded off and was wakened by the car juddering as I had drifted into the gravel that passed for a central reservation. It shook me up and I felt I'd dodged a bullet.

Ever since then, when I get that dozy feeling, I always pull over or into a service station if on the motorway. 10 minutes with your eyes closed, a brief walk and a cup of coffee and I am sorted.

[sparky Paul]

Yes, I've done that. Similar story...

I was working on a project with a company up in Peterlee about 25 years ago, I was travelling up there every day, about 120 miles from where I lived at the time. Brand new Rover 214 hired for the job, the Honda Concerto shaped one.

Zooming up the A1 one Monday morning, I was a bit knackered from the weekend, I can remember being suddenly woken by drifting gently onto the bump strip near the central reservation... and then the realisation that I didn't recognise the scenery. I have no idea to this day how far I went whilst in the land of nod, it could have been hundred yards, it could have been half a mile.

Cold sweat, window down, radio up. Scared me witless, and I've never done it again since.

[sparky Paul]

Just reading the other comments, I can also appreciate the 'not knowing how you got home' syndrome.

For a spell I was working weekends only, 6am Saturday 12 hour days, 6am Sunday morning for 4-6 hours, then back at 6pm for a 12 hour night shift. Driving home Monday morning, I was like a zombie, and I often couldn't remember parts of that 20 mile journey.

Autopilot took over, i think. 

[Jocko]

Cold sweat, window down, radio up. Scared me witless, and I've never done it again since.

That was me, exactly.

[culzean]

Copper once told me they knew if it was 'an asleep at the wheel' accident by the complete absence of skidmarks (except in the drivers pants maybe) -  think ABS has stopped them relying on that method these days though.

[sparky Paul]

...complete absence of skidmarks (except in the drivers pants maybe)

 

[Jocko]

Seemingly ABS still leaves skid marks. They are just not continuous. My brother told me that a fair proportion of the one vehicle accidents he attended to were usually down to the driver nodding off.

[Jocko]

What was unpleasant Jocko was when the har came in in the early hours. Broad daylight but the har was just about car bonnet level above the road so you could see perfectly well but couldn't see the road !
The har was responsible for messing up many a flying programme first thing in the morning.

Vic.

The haar is famous in these parts. It comes rolling in clamping visibility down to only a few yards. We never ever get a spell of sunny days here on the east coast. Day one is sunny. Day two haar comes in after tea. Day three haar hangs around until 10 am and returns at 4pm. Day four it never lifts at all. Yet go two miles in from the coast and the sun is splitting the pavements.
I remember coming home on the top deck of a double decker and as it climbed up out of Aberdour the top deck came out of the haar while the driver was still in the murk. It is quite a sight to see, travelling two feet above the clouds.

[richardfrost]

I think there is a definite difference between driving 'on autopilot' and falling asleep at the wheel.

It seems as though the rumble strips have saved a few of us reading the stories above. I have also only done this once and as is the pattern, whilst driving a long way at a time when normally I would be asleep in bed.

Doesn't the old joke go..'I want do die peacefully in my sleep, like my Grandad. Not screaming in terror like his passengers.'

But I have many times 'come alert' and realised I have no memory of driving the last few miles - usually motorway miles. The articles here discuss this and explain how it works and why it is risky...

http://gizmodo.com/why-we-don-t-crash-our-cars-while-daydreaming-and-drivi-1776038460
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mental-mishaps/201404/the-dangers-going-autopilot
http://safety-doc.com/safety-blogs/blog/driving-toward-an-autopilot.html

[Jocko]

Three interesting articles. Richard. I don't feel I am driving on autopilot, the times I reach my destination with a blank for part of the journey. I think it is just the brain had done a quick defrag. It gets the information, thinks to itself, "I have a hundred other examples exactly the same as this", and deletes it. Just as you would do with photos on your laptop or songs on your iPod. It sees the memory getting filled with junk so makes some space for more important stuff.
My thesis will be out in the Spring!

[culzean]

Just shows how good the human brain is,  until mobile phones and infotainment systems get involved.

On a similar vein, apparently human memory is a slippery thing,  researchers have found that recalling a memory is not (as previously thought) like taking a file out,  reading it and replacing the file and the original file contents stay untouched.  It is more like taking a computer file off the hard drive and  into RAM, then deleting the hard drive copy and 're-remembering' (during which phase the file can be altered / edited)  the file and putting it back onto the hard drive,  so every time we recall a memory we basically lose the original and replace it with a copy, this means that our memories change over time.   Researchers have found memory is a fluid thing, not fixed as was always thought

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/05/20/when-memories-are-remembered-they-can-be-rewritten/

I am with Jocko, I have always used the analogy of a hard drive when thinking of the human brain, the older you get the fuller and more fragmented the information gets (when you think of all the things that have happened in your life that you have to remember there is not really a hard drive big enough to store it all),  it is not that older people forget stuff,  it is all there but just takes longer to retrieve,  what we need is a good defrag - I'm sure the brain has to do this every so often just to keep us functioning,  but the funny thing is as people get older it is childhood memories that come back instead of what happened last week.