+1. I had a similar experience - my one auto accident (though I am much younger than you) was when I clipped a mirror on a parked car after sleeping 5 hours.

I wonder if we as a society will ever come around to treating insufficient sleep similarly to drunkenness or distraction for drivers. My intuition says it's similarly dangerous.

I know that in North Carolina (I lived there a year and had to get a new license during that period) there's a section of the driving handbook that covers drowsy driving.

Here's some info from drowsydriving.org > "According to a study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, people who sleep six to seven hours a night are twice as likely to be involved in (such) a crash as those sleeping 8 hours or more, while people sleeping less than 5 hours increased their risk four to five times."

http://drowsydriving.org/about/facts-and-stats/ http://www.ncsl.org/research/transportation/summaries-of-cur...

> I wonder if we as a society will ever come around to treating insufficient sleep similarly to drunkenness or distraction for drivers. My intuition says it's similarly dangerous.

There are some regulations about minimum amounts of sleep for airline pilots.

https://www.faa.gov/news/fact_sheets/news_story.cfm?newsId=1...

I guess it would have a high cost and intrusiveness to try to document individual motorists' sleep, but I can imagine that if self-driving cars catch on as broadly and as quickly as many people have predicted, fatigued driving could become much more stigmatized and punished than it is today.

Also for truckers, bus drivers, people that drive for a living. Eg: http://ec.europa.eu/transport/modes/road/social_provisions/d... (although, its "rest" not sleep. I'm not sure how you would mandate sleep - or monitor it in a sensible manner).

We also don't document their alcohol consumption - only when a car is pulled over on specific suspicion (modulo checkpoints).

Perhaps a field test of some of the markers shared by alcohol and drowsiness. Maybe test for micro sleeps, concentration, etc. similarly to how the effects of insufficient sleep are measured in a lab.

When I feel sleepy driving, I get off the road and just close my eyes until I start to feel like I'm falling asleep. Then I am good to go.

Studies have shown waste products are removed during sleep by the circulation of cerebrospinal fluid. Perhaps even a short period of cerebrospinal fluid circulation is enough to stave off sleepiness.

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2013/10/18/23621181...

That describes a moment, not just a list. Some wake-up calls are scarier than others; glad it worked out.

Good call. I'm curious, what is your solution to getting more sleep? Frequently those all-nighters come as a result of deadlines and pressure from work. The usual tradeoff is work vs family vs sleep, where often you only get to pick 1. Have you had any success in getting 2 or even 3 of those together?

I would say work vs kids vs wife (quality time) vs hobbies vs sleep vs income. I have prioritised kids, wife and sleep. I work as a deceloper contractor in Sweden and only work 80% (32hr/week) in order to ger everything to work. So income, hobbies and spending lots of time working is not what I'm doing right now. I try to see the big picture and might increase those three things when the kids are more independent. But right now they need their father and I want to have a goid relationship to them. Plus they are fun.

Just say no. You are better on a full night of sleep for both your family and your job. They need to be understanding there.

Totally agree. I worked on an app where we had customers who had installed our 'agent'. We were forced to do a late night update. Whoops - sent out a version that would never be able to update again - there went 100K customers we could never upgrade.

Wow, what went so wrong to the point that it blocked the update process?

In my case, there is lot of inefficiencies. I can easily cut down on few things

(a) I spend time browsing emails while lying down (easily eats 30 mins per night). (b) No meetups in evenings. (c) Excuse from business meetings after a certain time (d) Cut down on social events on weekdays. (e) Push all non-essential things to weekends.

I made this list for myself and it helps free up evenings. Your situation may differ.

I realized that my kids are my investments as well. In to someone's future/life (not trying to sound too dramatic). So, that's highest priority at this point and hence the sleep.

I see this all too much, my reasoning for working 8-9 hour days and nothing more is its being dishonest to the company to put in longer hours. Obviously estimates (and estimates always turn into deadlines) have been done wrong and by putting in those all nighters/extra hours you are only covering up those bad estimates. I find it much better to learn from mistakes so next time the estimates are done better.

> work vs family vs sleep

If I have to make a choice, I always choose sleep. Why? The other two priorities have a one-way dependency on it. I can sleep well while neglecting work or family, but I cannot make a decent contribution to work or family if I do not have enough sleep.

I'm only 28, but I pulled one this week. I don't ever drive until i can sleep again. This time, I had my boss drive me to and from the office :)

I'm glad you're alright and I wish you the best!