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Only once. Worked overnight at a hospital on weekends to help put myself through college. I fell asleep driving home after working all night, hit a side walk, and thankfully promptly woke up without hurting anyone.
I have refused to take an overnight job ever since.
They are starting to hold employers liable when the exhaust their employees and then send them home and they crash and kill someone on the way home. It started with a movie production company in the 1990s.
He was in China for work for 2 weeks. While there he worked 16 hour days and while he tried sleeping his boss and co-workers called him as the daylight times are opposite, so he only really got about 3 hours of sleep a night. When he returned he didn't get home till midnight. He had asked his boss prior if he could have off the day after he returned to adjust back to the time difference (not to mention it's a 13 hour flight) and he was told no. He got 4 hours of sleep and went to work. On his way home that day he fell asleep at the wheel while on the expressway. He drove off the road and started going into a ditch. That is when he woke up and realized what was going on. From what he can remember he then jerked the steering wheel which got him back onto the road, but then lost control of the truck.
He survived the crash. He totaled his truck which was a Nissan Frontier (just paid off a few months prior). The doctors believe it saved his life. He did not hit anyone and no one hit him. When I first saw him at the hospital he just looked swollen, but not too bad. However, I could tell something wasn't quite right. The facial surgeon came in and told me he crushed almost every bone on the left side of his face, plus part of his jaw, his nose and his entire left eye socket! To date he has had 4 reconstructive facial surgeries with another next year around February. At one point he almost lost his eyesight. His eye was saved and his eye socket (along with most of the left side of his face) has been reconstructed with titanium. He will probably need more surgeries in the future as this will be a life long process, but he's alive! He can walk, he has no brain damage, has his eye sight and can work. We are very thankful!
He has missed an overall total of about 8 months of work through out all of this to date. He is lucky enough to receive short term disability when he is off which is 70% of his pay. Every year when he needs a new surgery it's new medical deductibles and we are still paying. No one has helped us financially and it was not considered workman's comp! We have spoke to a few lawyers and none would take our case so we have given up the fight. But again, we are grateful he is alive and doing well as it could have been much worse! My daughters at the time were 5 & 7.
My advice to all.......if you are tired and fatigued, don't drive!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I caught myself dozing off once. I don't know if it was the rumble strips that woke me or what, but I awoke before leaving the road. Scared the bejesus out of me. Now if I start getting drowsy I find a place where I can pull off to run around the car, open a window or two, and look for something in the car that I can eat, etc.
Another time a cop stopped me because I was apparently drifting back and forth in my lane a bit. He was checking for DWI, but that wasn't it, so he told me to pull off at a park about 10 miles ahead and grab a little nap. I still had about 1100 miles of driving to get home. After the nap I drove another 1000 miles, then pulled off and took another little nap.
None of us should drive while that tired. It's like DWI but without the booze.
Mercedes measures how you drive in the first few minutes to create a profile as to how you drive, inputs like how you are turning the wheel, how you are braking, etc., several indicators. After a while, when the computer notices a change in those benchmarks, an icon appears on the message screen indicating that you may be drowsy. It picks up on things long before I'd ever be to the point of nodding off or drifting, at the point where my eyes may be tired, etc. It's quite an interesting system, and differs from passive systems like lane departure warning systems that alert you when the car is drifting, and can be a preventive measure when used by a responsible driver who does not turn it off or who does not ignore the recommendations. It's much easier to take a 10-15 minute break, get a coffee, run around, and start the trip again than it is to fall asleep and crash.
I like it and request Mercedes rental cars when I am in a different time zone on short notice, times when I am more likely to be drowsy at a different time, and may not notice it. I am not affected too much by jet lag, but the Attention Assist has alerted me to declines in measured inputs when I was on the 405 Freeway because it was about 2AM by my East Coast set body clock, yet only 11PM there. So, I took a break, even though I only had a short distance to go, mileage-wise, but in LA one never knows. Now, I probably would not have fallen asleep, but I appreciated the early warning from the car and had a quick cup of coffee at a Winchell's as they're always open.
Great feature, wish they would develop something to detect a drunk driver and force them to
pull over !!!
I have almost fallen asleep a few times on a long road trip. It's a very strange sensation. I was so tired that I convinced myself that I could close my eyes for just a few seconds to relieve some of the fatigue. I did this while on the highway going 70 mph. The shock of swerving the first time didn't convince me not to try again. After the third or fourth time, I was awake enough to pull off the highway and get a hotel for the night. I rarely travel at night now.
Yes...,.was in a truck pulling at utility trailer. Husband hollered and I jerked awake...I had wandered off the left side of the interstrate into a very broad and deep median, about halfway down. I brought it all back up the side of the hill and into the left lane....and moved to the right lane, stopped on the shoulder and got out, shaking.
Scared the hell out of me. I knew better. My dad almost died in 1971 when he fell asleep and hit a telephone pole. He was banged up and spent a couple of days in the hospital, but nothing broken. Car was totaled - and this was back when cars still had steel bumpers. I doubt he was wearing his (lap only) seat belt because few people did back then.
SO - if I feel sleeping, I'll stop in a safe place, lock the doors and nap for awhile. Or let somebody else drive. Or pop a caffeine pill 'till I can get to a safe place to stop.
I've driven home in a blackout, of which I still have no memory. I was soooo lucky, and sooo stupid. I never did it again.. Drinking & driving is so selfish and impulsive. Just the once, but I know that's all it takes. The Lord watches over fools & drunks?
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