Measures like opening windows in the middle of winter, playing loud music, pinching, etc. stop working eventually and a nap really is the only way out.

I do agree, power-naps are amazing to help you regain focus. One time I was driving and it was almost dawn, and I was desperately trying to force myself to reach the next town so I could get a room. I realized I probably wouldn't even make it that far and pulled over at the next rest stop and slept for 30 minutes. I woke up feeling more well-rested than I had any right to be.

When you start having micro-sleep episodes (your attention/memory has inexplicable gaps), or start experiencing sensory hallucinations, it's well past the time for you to rest.

Good news is I would only have killed myself. But honestly there is a reason young people have more car accidents, they make bad fucking choices. I was nothing but lucky!

I know two people with the issue that GP is talking about, and it's not what you're talking about.

They're perfectly alert when they get behind the wheel. They get drowsy on longer drives like 1hr+, which is why any time we do road trips I drive for them. And all that 'pull over and take a power nap' bullshit doesn't work. It's not grounded in any science to start with. I know both have tried coffee, breaks, stopping and taking a walk, etc. Of all those things, they said taking a nap is actually the worst because when they wake up they feel even more tired.

So their choices are: have someone else drive them, don't drive beyond a 1hr distance range, or deal with the drowsiness. You can imagine how sometimes life just forces them into #3 even though both are keenly aware of their issue and do their best to mitigate it.

Tech to detect when they phase out and save their life is absolutely the correct way to go.

If people think that #3 is acceptable, they should never be allowed to drive a car, for everyone else's protection.

People do potentially deadly risk reward calculus all the time. And of all potentially deadly things that people regularly do to crack down on, this one would have a pretty huge negative ROI for society. This issue impacts a non-trivial percentage of the population. You can't tell them all to change jobs or move their houses to be within whatever travel time limit. This purist notion of 'they should never be allowed to drive a car, for everyone else's protection' crumbles at the most trivial examination when you consider that you're talking about leaving millions of people jobless or in significantly worse quality of life conditions, while also completely reshuffling the housing markets and zoning. And even then, sometimes events will come up that force them to take that chance regardless, such as family emergencies.

Rather than this purist isolated-logic bullshit that would probably crash the economy if seriously enforced because you have absolutely failed to consider the first and second order effects of what you're suggesting, we actually have a viable tech solution instead.

I'm going to guess that most people who share this viewpoint are either high income earners living in a bubble who don't know what real life is like for most of the population, or are logical purists looking at this issue in isolation and not accounting for what life is like for most of the population. Life for most of the population is working paycheck to paycheck at whatever job you can get in order to make ends meet and keep your kids fed, and living in whatever housing you can get that doesn't make it impossible to get enough sleep to physically keep living due to long commute times. Being prevented from driving would absolutely destroy most affected families. You're going to do a lot more damage to society by preventing all those affected from driving than by doing nothing and letting it contribute to a small percentage of the road toll, which in itself is an insignificant percentage of the total death toll. Which is why every country on the planet has done nothing more drastic than awareness campaigns, despite being aware of this issue.

Really, this is where this entire discussion becomes moot. Fatigue and microsleep as a cause of road fatalities are a well studied issue that every developed nation is aware of and has done the calculus on. And not a single one of them decided to ban those affected from driving, because the calculus of that policy results in a massive net COST, not gain. And that calculus shifts even further now that we have fairly cheap car technology available to mitigate the issue. When you think through all this, the only conclusion is 'ban affected people from driving' is moronic and does significantly more harm than good.

tl;dr: you'll save more lives by replacing a single coal power plant with renewable energy than by implementing your policy. And you won't destroy the lives of millions of people and potentially crash the economy in the process. And there's already a viable solution on market that mitigates it almost entirely anyway. Pick your battles.

We've designed a system, however, that is set up such that it's bound to happen sometimes. Not everyone can call in to work and tell their boss "sorry, I slept badly last night, I'm not coming in" or order a $60 Uber to get somewhere on a whim. Moralizing at people is just virtue signaling.

This, and the fact that the HN demographic, mostly being techies, seem to be a bit disconnected from what real life looks like to 80%+ of the population of the world. A few instances per year of not coming in to work due to poor sleep or having to order Uber wouldn't just inconvenicence them - it would completely destroy their lives along with their children/families. People are doing what they need to do to survive and look after their loved ones.

He slammed into a pickup truck and killed that truck's occupant.

I had to be called in as a witness of the incident by the victim and trucking company's attorneys.

I think there's a strong difference between (rightfully so) blaming the companies that force this environment and the people who are just trying to make a living safely.

I've only been in the full-time tech industry for about 3.5 years.

Before then I was working hourly jobs to make ends meet, including working half time or more while studying full-time in college, working during high school, etc. This so I could pay rent and tuition with minimal, if any, aid.

I couldn't even afford a car until after graduating from university.

I was walking or taking public transportation everywhere prior to finally getting a car.

I won't disagree that people in SV can be snobby but let's not jump to conclusions here.

>Having climbed from societal rock-bottom to a decent position in the tech industry, my mind is constantly blown by the fact that the average techie thinks their life is anything like what the vast majority of this planet are dealing with.

I'm not sure what your point is supposed to be, here? You say that I, and other like-minded people, are just "average techies" despite literally just explaining that some of us too had our own challenges.

I think it's okay to admit that nearly everybody has had their share of challenging backgrounds. Some people's privileges are the other's disadvantages and so on. That much is obvious.

But aside from that. Backgrounds aside.

Driving when you know you have a constant issue of falling asleep, getting drowsy, all of the above is unsafe. Even if you have priorities that you place above your own health/well-being, the problem with having those issues and still choosing to drive is that you are now deciding how others will be affected by your decision.

The moment you begin endangering other people's lives is the same moment that backgrounds, poorly-disadvantaged or not, become meaningless.

Because I highly doubt some victim's family is going to be impressed that you or someone else knowingly chose to drive repeatedly while acknowledging they would not be fully aware of what they were doing just because of working conditions.

Humanity has a pretty substantial record of doing "unsafe" for the betterment of themselves, mankind, or just for giggles. The risks are well-known to themselves, who are you to suggest that they cannot manage those risks?

Some people manage it their entire lives, while others do not. However, I'd trust someone driving who is well aware of their boundaries over someone who is not aware, any day.

My wife fell asleep at the wheel once, I just reached over and kept the wheel straight while trying to wake her up. I hope cars can do that in the future, for those times that I'm not there. And for the record, she's one of those that has never fallen asleep before or gotten drowsy at the wheel.

> Having climbed from societal rock-bottom to a decent position in the tech industry

I've done this as well. I've gone to war, I've seen things you likely can't imagine without a bunch of CGI and special effects. Most of the tech world has no idea what "rock bottom" even means except through the view of Hollywood, and even that doesn't look all that bad from that angle.

Spoken life someone who never had to decide between rolling the 0.000001% chance dice on driving to work tired, and their kids going hungry or potentially getting taken away if they lose their job. People do what they need to do to survive and take care of their loved ones. People will absolutely risk their lives and those of others in order to protect their kids at all cost, even when facing much worse odds. That's a constant in life. No amount of moral posturing will change that. I'm not saying their actions are 'right', just saying they're an inevitable outcome of the society we have built.

Efficiently demonstrating my point - some people on HN live in a bubble of privilege and have no idea what real life is like for the vast majority of the population.

I'm just curious, with all the moral posturing - realistically, what would you suggest that people do when after a long shift at a blue collar job they realize they might be too tired to safely drive home. Do they sleep at their workplace? How does that transition into them needing to be back at work, showered, dressed, etc. by 9am the next morning? What are the actual logistics of this concept here?

And how do you reconcile all this moral posturing and the impact of banning drivers who experience this (up to 50% of the entire population of developed nations by some polling) vs. the fact that we now have a pretty cheap car technology that turns that 0.000001% dice roll into a 1e-20 one.

Or should we just treat everybody we don't know as obviously spoiled people who live in a bubble of privilege, have nothing to lose, have never missed a meal, love no one and have no one who depends on them, and only have an opinion on what you do in order to feel superior to you and to humiliate you?

The reason this defence (and a line of other similar) exist is because as society we have accepted the fact that people will act in self interest, self protection, and above all protection of their children. No amount of education or indoctrination overrides that. (Fun fact, in some countries, escaping from jail is not illegal/punishable - assuming you don't commit other crimes in the act. Because, once again, we as society recognise that it's human nature to seek freedom and it cannot be overriden, therefore punishing it achieves nothing.

Ultimately it doesn't matter if you think a parent driving to work tired is acceptable or not, because we already know that they absolutely will. The only question is how do you mitigate the damage of driving to work tired, and whether your mitigation strategy is a net benefit or net loss to society.

'Make it compulsory for cars to detect sleeping/unconscious/seizing/microsleeping driver and pull over' is an infinitely better strategy in every regard imaginable compared to 'ban up to 50% of the population from driving'. And note that only one of those 4 situations would be avoidable with a ban, the other 3 can strike at any time with no warning or history.

There has been enough indirect evidence to suggest advanced driver assist without a significant driver monitoring is dangerous (Google's report of their employees doing other things, the fatal accident of Uber's self-driving vehicle, various fatal and non-fatal accidents of Tesla autopilot due to misuse), but there's been no systematic study and we don't have enough public data to suggest it's one way or another.

I grew up in Southern California where one time my car broke down and my 20 minute commute (mostly highway) turned into a 2hr bus ride while my car was in the shop. Once I was an hour late to work because the bus came and went before it was scheduled for that stop. I've lived in a rural town in the south where no public transportation even existed. There wasn't even a way for most people to walk into town because there weren't even sidewalks. A few people biked, but it was pretty well known that if you weren't on a $5k bike riding in the nice area of town you had a DUI and were riding your kid's bike to get to work. I would have had to walk along a highway (a 30 minute walk) just to get to the store (I saw people doing this too). I've been in the Bay and NYC where busses have to wait at stops and there is light rail. Now I live in a city where I rarely drive my car and using my bike is easier to get around. These situations are very different and frankly I don't think people understand this.

The problem is that most of the US doesn't have infrastructure to relieve people of the choice between driving and being safe because they have to maintain their job. In many places there aren't even enough population density to make this economically feasible (aka profitable or net even). Someone was mentioning that technology can't solve this problem, but frankly this seems like the exact problem autonomous vehicles solve. Light rail is great, but it isn't a practical technology for most of the country.

You contend that there are millions of people who knowingly drive while tired enough to fall asleep at the wheel and with a history of doing so?

If so, I contend that your argument is contrived and your claim is unrealistic. Most people do not and would not drive while so tired that they knew they were likely to fall asleep while doing so. For a start, such a pattern of behaviour would be suicidal. Statistically, there would be far more nasty accidents due to tiredness than actually happen.

In reality, only a tiny proportion of people drive while so tired that they might actually fall asleep at the wheel. Not only doing that but knowingly doing it when you have a history of dropping off while driving is utterly inexcusable.

From: https://www.nsc.org/road-safety/safety-topics/fatigued-drivi...

Those are enormous numbers. I wonder how big the economic hit would be if none of those people drove.

If we're being brutally objective here, road accidents are extremely expensive in purely economic terms. Obviously there could be a loss of productivity for anyone directly involved who was injured. But then you also need to expend considerable resources to clear the accident site and fully reopen the road. While you're doing that, you might be delaying many people due to congestion in the area of the accident. Then there is the cost of caring for anyone wounded, repairing any physical damage done to public infrastructure, and repairing or replacing any other vehicles that were involved and any cargo they were carrying. And of course, in the worst case, you have the profound effects of losing people entirely under such tragic circumstances, which involve not just losing anything they would have contributed for the rest of their lives, but also the consequences for their family and friends, their employers or clients, and anyone else who depended on them economically right down to the place on the corner where they stopped to buy a coffee each morning on the way into the office.

So even if we're only trying to avoid the most catastrophic cases such as someone actually falling asleep and causing a multi-vehicle pile-up on a major road, and even if we err on the side of caution and take many thousands of drivers off the road who are at significant risk of causing such an accident but in reality would not have done so, it's still not clear cut that the economic hit would be greater than the harm prevented.

For those who like hard data, I can't immediately offer you any, but as a very rough guide, here in the UK (where we already have lower per-capita road deaths than most of the world) I have seen arguments made about local road improvement schemes that suggested a seven-figure cost to save a single life would be economically justified. It's not hard to believe if you consider that a fatal accident can close a road for several hours, leaving thousands of vehicles stranded, and involving dozens of emergency responders and all of the equipment and vehicles they need, in addition to the injury, death and damage caused to anyone directly involved.

> You should never get behind the wheel if there's a chance you'll fall asleep!

I would say anyone that feels drowsy has a change of falling asleep. So 50% of the population should regularly not get behind the wheel, by GC's standard.

One of the reasons I would love to have autopilot is because I have a history of dozing off at the wheel. Never so much where I've had an accident, but bad enough where I've scared myself badly.

This was followed by arguing for the safety feature in case it happened again.

Though it's not really a thread until OC was disagreed with, so thread works too.

For most people, the other option is to stop driving to work and then be jobless and eventually homeless, make their kids go hungry, or go bankrupt. You guys seriously seem to be completely disconnected from what reality looks like for 80%+ of the population.

> In reality, only a tiny proportion of people drive while so tired that they might actually fall asleep at the wheel

You have no idea how microsleep works. It does not involve 'knowingly driving while tired enough to fall asleep'. This single statement makes it clear that you're expressing some pretty strong and sure-sounding opinions on a subject that you know nothing about. You (as in specifically you) could be experiencing microsleep on a regular basis and never even know it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsleep

And even when talking about the other cause - fatigued driving, are you suggesting that people come in to work late after every night they had poor sleep? I mean that would actually be a decent policy if not for the fact that a handful of instances of that in a year would get most people fired? Are you suggesting that someone shouldn't drive home after a long shift? (do they like, sleep at their workplace? have you thought through this?). And we're back to my first point - I don't think you understand what life is like for the majority of the population who live paycheck to paycheck and work any job that they can get just to survive and keep their kids fed.

As someone enjoying the 'privilege' of working in tech and having flexible hours and being able to arbitrarily work from home and having enough savings to take a 6 month long sabbatical without any financial strain, I can see where you might be coming from. As someone who spent the first half of their life working blue collar jobs and having a panic attack over an unexpected 300 dollar expense which literally meant I spent 2 weeks eating nothing but pasta, I'm pretty sure you either never knew or have forgotten what life is like for most people out there. Yeah for you and I being banned from driving is just a mild inconvenience and 'sigh, now I have to use Uber for all travel'. For most people, it's a life and family destroying sentence.

The issue is also compounded if you work a blue collar job where it's likely that you aren't even commuting to the same place every day and need to haul tools with you.

It's really easy for people to make blanket statements that you shouldn't drive if you have a history of being tired at the wheel, but the reality is that a large portion of our population doesn't have an option.

You keep writing as if this is a normal problem that everyone faces. If it were, and if everyone or even a moderate proportion of drivers were doing what you seem to be arguing is essential, then population numbers would be falling rapidly due to all the fatal accidents. As far as I can see, however, you haven't actually provided any data to back up your repeated claims about how widespread this problem is and how much damage would be caused if the relevant drivers stopped driving when they were unsafe.

You have no idea how microsleep works.

Susceptibility to microsleep is usually a result of failing to sufficient good quality sleep normally, an underlying medical problem, or both. Common conditions like obstructive sleep apnoea can be tested for. Effective treatments like CPAP machines exist. Given that OSA can have other serious health effects as well as causing the unusual tiredness that becomes a danger if you're doing something like driving or operating heavy machinery, investigation and treatment of potential sleep disorders is definitely recommended.

Of course if you simply don't get enough hours of sleep regularly, if you don't sleep well because you do things like drinking excessive amounts of alcohol in the evening, you can go to bed earlier, cut down on the booze, etc.

You (as in specifically you) could be experiencing microsleep on a regular basis and never even know it.

Given that there are many warning signs of microsleeps, one of which is being very tired all the time, and given that the subject of this thread is people driving when they know they're so tired they might fall asleep and having a history of scares caused by falling asleep at the wheel, I don't see that your attempt to make this personal has any relevance to the debate.

You say that as if there weren't any other options. You have public transport and you can share a car (and expenses) with someone who has your same destination.

> For most people, it's a life and family destroying sentence.

Dying in a car accident is literally a death sentence and has worse implications for your family.

So, how does this work, exactly? So you set up carpooling with a coworker. And then one day you don't sleep well. Luckily enough, they're there to pick you up so you don't have to drive! ...but what happens when it's your turn to drive? You tell them, whoops, I'm tired today, so you're going to have to drive and get your spouse to change their plans so that you have access to a car? Or maybe they're always the one driving... what happens on days that they're tired? They cancel and you both have to find your own way via public transit?

Like what are the specific logistics here, accounting for failure modes? Does it amount to "spend $100 on Uber on days after a mediocre night's sleep"?

I think if you fall asleep while driving regularly there is a serious and systematic problem.

How do all these hopelessly trapped families ever take their kids to things like medical appointments?

If so, there’s something of a sliding scale. Most of them take their car - their single car, that serves the whole family. When it breaks down, they lean on friends, family, and neighbors for help.

Those without a vehicle in the first place... don’t. I live in a town of <15k people today, and grew up about thirty miles outside of it. I graduated high school in the early 2000s - many of my classmates didn’t see a doctor unless they had a medical emergency.

It seems like there is a large disconnect between your perception and the reality of life for much of America.

Some of the earlier discussion here has apparently been mostly people talking at cross-purposes and didn't turn out to be very enlightening. However, it does seem that at least some people here really are trying to defend something that I think most people would consider unconscionable where I come from. The arguments have essentially been that people there have no realistic choice but to rely on theirs cars, even if driving them is obviously dangerous, or they literally can't live a normal life and support their families properly.

This raised a lot of questions for me that single-car or car-free households face all the time over here, like how you get the kids to school or anyone who isn't the driver to important appointments like medical ones. I was surprised that your response was more-or-less "you don't", but then in the context of medical appointments there is again a very different culture here to yours. It would be similarly unconscionable for most of us in the UK to bring a child into the world and not then make sure they get all of their check-ups and vaccinations at the right times, and you'd have to try very hard to find a situation where a parent without access to a car couldn't still make those provisions for their child in some realistic way. From comments by yourself and others here, I conclude that this is not necessarily the case in the US, or at least in significant parts of it.

93% of American households do - and I expect if you took away a few large dense metros like NYC and Boston, that number would jump up to about 98%

No you don't. In 95% of the US "Public transit" is maybe a bus that stops a mile away once every 2 hours. If that.

In this case, if the person isn't able to get disability b/c of their condition, I can't fault them for doing what they need to survive. I don't like that it puts others at risk, and hope they are taking steps to reduce the risk. Detection technology that alerts them seems like a step in the right direction.

I've had to do all of those things. At some times in my life, I've had the first and last for an extended period. To my knowledge, I have never as a result driven in a condition that made me unsafe behind the wheel, though.

Yours is another comment that talks about people doing what they need to do to survive, which is an ironic characterisation given we're talking about behaviour that is borderline suicidal.

We live with that risk, and some others have to live with more risk because of their circumstances. I'm more reacting to all the posts that no one should ever drive at all with even the slightest risk that they'll fall asleep, which is just an unrealistic ideal for most of us.

You know they let some people drive who have extremely bad eyesight--bad enough that that they can't read road signs? Yet they are allowed to drive, because not driving makes participation in our economy next to impossible.

Comments like this are side-tracking the discussion. The original premise wasn't that sometimes everyone is a bit more alert or tired than others. It was someone who knew very well that they had a history of falling asleep at the wheel and wanted to continue driving apparently knowing it was likely to happen again.

We're human and can't say for certain that falling asleep is impossible (or some other medical event won't happen).

Of course not. But normal people with a healthy lifestyle don't just randomly fall asleep at the wheel in the absence of a serious (but perhaps undiagnosed) medical condition. The way a lot of the comments in this thread are defending driving while tired, you'd think millions of people could all just doze off without any warning or awareness that they were at unusually high risk.

You know they let some people drive who have extremely bad eyesight--bad enough that that they can't read road signs?

In my country, such poor vision would (if not properly corrected) immediately disqualify you from holding a driving licence. This is a policy that I entirely agree with, so we apparently come from very different perspectives here.

It's really not that complicated. Stop making choices for other people that could cause them to wind up injured or killed. Because yes, that is in fact what you're saying to do here.

Yes? There are even millions of people who drive drunk every year, which is a far more conscious choice to endanger other people than someone driving home after long, late shift.

15 million people work a night shift. If 10% of them drive home drowsy one night per year, you're already at millions.

You've never lived in the States, have you? The absolute vast majority of anything in the States is inaccessible without a car. If you live in a city, sure, you might get by with public transport (almost universally very bad in the States). Anywhere outside the city center? Good luck getting anywhere without a car.

If you can't stay awake for an hour that must be very challenging but I don't think you should be driving at all for longer distances. At least not on a road you share with other people!

Maybe you have a newborn at home, and... Got a bad sleep. Or were woken up by a fire alarm. Or maybe you're just drowsy in the mornings, like me!

I used to have a real easy 35 minute drive to work, on a single, straight road with a few sets of lights.

I probably nodded off a bit while driving at least once a month, if not more. Especially at a set of lights.

I'm not a morning person!

It's hard to say if there will be more or fewer accidents as this becomes prevalent. I'm wary of it by default given the already prevalent incidence of DUI and sleepy driving. Those individuals seem likely to use this as an excuse or crutch. I'd be happy to be surprised.

Computers are always getting better.

My money is on the computers.

I wouldn't. I'd consider it criminal negligence to get behind the wheel of a car at times when it's impossible to make a suitable effort to drive such equipment.

It's not acceptable to hop into a car drunk, either.

The effects aren't really that much different between the two, response-time wise.

I've driven the family from Northern Califorina to Sourthern California quite a few times, many of them overnight. It took one instance of actually falling asleep at the wheel for a few seconds to realize "oh, that's the difference between tired and falling asleep at the wheel."

I definitely recognize it now and never let it happen now (stopping and sleeping, trading out for someone else to drive, etc), but the point is I didn't think I was close to that level previously. Experience is something that we can't expect all people to have and exhibit the wisdom of, and unfortunately some things learned through experience are much harder (or nearly impossible) to teach without doing, and for dangerous things that's a problem for normal people.

As a much much more extreme example, I've heard that's why Navy Seal training keeps candidates up and physically and mentally exhausted for days at a time. Partly to see who can handle the pressure, and partly so they have experienced that condition before and understand it in themselves and others.

Then they can follow the same rule as for overtaking: if in doubt, don't. It's not complicated. There is no way you are tired enough to be actually falling asleep without realising you're far too tired to be driving safely. It's not as if it's a close thing where one minute you're alert and driving responsibly and the next minute you're out. Anyone who can't make that determination reliably is demonstrably unfit to be in charge of a vehicle and should hand in their licence.

The kinds of medical conditions that do make sudden dozing off normal for a few unfortunate people are grounds for refusing to issue a driving licence to those people in most places, for reasons that should hopefully be obvious.

Monotonous activities frequently make people drowsy. This is not some medical condition, it is a common occurrence. Driving is often an acutely monotonous activity.

I know a huge number of people that get drowsy while reading books. Do they all suffer from the same "condition"?

The point is that it isn't "just like that", but not everyone has experience with passing out from being tired while trying to continue doing something they were actively trying trying to concentrate on.

> If you're going to do something like that, you need to plan the journey sensibly, take plenty of breaks, make sure you got extra rest before you leave. Don't they teach this sort of stuff in basic driver training where you are?

Obviously not well enough, or I had forgotten some of it in the almost decade between taking the classes and actually experiencing it for the first time. And to be clear, I thought I was being cautious, it was definitely not my first time making that trip, and I didn't think I was so tired I would lose consciousness, and yet one second I was fine, and the next second (to my consciousness) I noticed I was halfway across the center divider. I didn't feel any more tired than I had on a a prior trip, yet, the conclusion is obvious, that level of tiredness feeling might lead to that outcome, therefore it was no longer acceptable.

So, here's the thing, prior to that situation I thought I was being responsible, and had years of experience to go by that indicated I could drive in that state. All it takes is once occurrence to let you know that what you thought as fine was not.

What exactly was a I supposed to obviously know from that beforehand? It's nice if you've always been able to know the correct level to stop at, or perhaps you stop far earlier than strictly needed, which is fine. You would never know if you stopped with plenty of attentive time left you could drive, but better safe than sorry.

All I see this meaning is that different people have different thresholds for this, and all I was saying originally is that I wish there was a way for us to impart this experience better during driver training, so people knew what the warning signs are better, in case their internal calibration was too far on the dangerous side initially, like mine was.

Except I was, and I did. And now I can recognize the signs that weren't obvious before, so I don't anymore. You're saying there's no way, and I'm giving you a concrete example of an instance.

> It's not as if it's a close thing where one minute you're alert and driving responsibly and the next minute you're out.

There's a huge range between "alert" and "asleep". I'm tired after a long day, yet I can drive responsibly. Even a the point where I could lay down and easily go to sleep if I chose to, I'm fine to drive for quite a while after that (preferred sleep time is not necessarily the same as responsible driving time, there are many factors that go into it).

> Anyone who can't make that determination reliably is demonstrably unfit to be in charge of a vehicle and should hand in their licence.

So, have you been in that situation? Or just always stopped before you got to that point? Or not even driven over a long enough period to be in that situation? You haven't even presented any anecdotal evidence, you've just made assertions that what I said I personally experienced can't be how I described it (and implied I was demonstrably unfit to drive at the point I said this happened to me).

And, in the gentlest possible way, if you were unable to recognise that you were so tired that you were likely to fall asleep while driving and make another choice, you were demonstrably unfit to drive at that time. It might have been understandable, particularly if you were young and inexperienced, but you still shouldn't have driven at that time and your actions were still irresponsible and dangerous.

Anyway, I think I'm done with this discussion. There are several posters here who are literally arguing that it's OK to drive knowing that they are severely impaired and have a much greater risk than any normal person would of injuring or killing someone. I can't argue rationally against such an irresponsible and selfish position, and my blood pressure has probably gone through the roof reading all of these comments and thinking of all the people who would disagree with them but can't because they're dead.

My example (and experience) wasn't about starting to drive. It was about being 4 hours into a 7-8 hour drive. The slow degradation of attention while sitting in a static position while watching static scenery go by for hours at a time.

> And, in the gentlest possible way, if you were unable to recognize that you were so tired that you were likely to fall asleep while driving and make another choice, you were demonstrably unfit to drive at that time.

Part of being unfit is sometimes not easily recognizing you're unfit. If you start in a perfectly fine shape, but degrade slowly over time, it can be hard to note the exact moment when things have gotten to a point where you should stop. And the whole point of my post was that recognizing this point, especially if it's over time and a slow degradation, can be hard if you've never experienced it before.

> I can't argue rationally against such an irresponsible and selfish position

Well, I don't think the people in this little corner of the discussion it are arguing that. People definitely shouldn't drive while impaired. I just think we should also consider, and see if there's a way to help, people that don't have enough experience to know when they're flirting with that state, for whatever reason it may be. Hopefully that at least some people here aren't arguing for allowing impaired people to drive is some consolation and reduces your stress at least a little. :/

https://www.rms.nsw.gov.au/geared/your_driving_skills/stayin...

It is drilled into us that we should stop every 2 hours regardless of how we feel. You cannot trust yourself to judge as by definition your judgment is impaired when tired, it's best to just stop and grab a free tea/coffee if you find one of their setups or even just pull over to rest your eyes or walk around your car for a couple of minutes to reset.

I'd add an occasional glance at the horizon too , if you're on a long trip. You can make it a game if you're driving a new route (guess which mountain is closest to the road you're on) Frequently changing focal distance helps a lot to prevent eye fatigue.

If we have a particular medical condition / issue then that is a different story.

But folks don't randomly fall asleep (I think?) if they're getting sufficient rest and they're not already tired.

But there are also measures one can take to mitigate tiredness while driving: winding the window down or turning the AC down, putting energising music on, stopping mid-journey and taking a break, etc.

There are also medical conditions one can have where they can fall asleep even when not tired. However I believe you’re denied a licence if you do suffer from any of them so this might well be a moot point.

Wouldn't you want to turn it up? You're less likely to fall asleep if you're cold.

Monotony can make you drowsy, regardless of how healthy you are or how much sleep you've had. And when this happens, it can catch you unawares even if you're looking for it.

Don’t do it.

Some people are always somewhat tired (eg sleep apnea or CFS), some people aren't tired when they start driving but become impaired at some point. Some people might have an undiagnosed condition that contributes.

There's no reason to not celebrate a simple advancement that might save people from a disaster.

This is it. I don't understand why this isn't higher up in the discussion.

Do you check whether your brakes work every time before setting off? Do you check whether your wheels are attached properly every time before setting off? There are a million things that could break on your car. They're just very unlikely to happen.

Pilots/maintenance crew for planes checks that kind of stuff for virtually every flight. We accept this small risk with cars. In return we get an enormous increase in efficiency. If everyone had to do a 5 minute check on their car every time before setting off, then that would be a lot of productive time spent on it.

not surprisingly that the "holier-than-thou" purists' arguments in this thread sound the same as the typical conservative argument against contraception - "by decreasing the weight of consequences it will encourage vice behaviour", and not surprisingly that these style arguments just outright fail in real life.

We never had people deliberately sleeping in cars (with pillows!) before autopilot was a thing. If the kinds of people prone to make these types of decisions come to trust technology to save them, we're going to wind up in a worse spot than before the technology existed.

People will rely on the tech to save them when it was never meant for that.

Not just "this" technology -- technology in general. There are always risk adjustments; airbags and seat belts had similar riskier-driving effects.

I don't know about the upthread commenter or how common a thing it is for him/her. But this isn't feasible advice. It is never possible to drive perfectly safely, it's just not. Everyone makes mistakes in cars, and preventing them needs to be a defense in depth treatment and not an impossible prohibition like this.

Saying "people sometimes drive tired" (goodness knows I have) leads to "maybe a driver-facing camera might save lives".

Saying "You should never drive tired!" is just a recipe for blaming the driver and fixing nothing.

There's a few places where one can live daily life without cars: a subset of really huge cities, some downtown areas of mid size cities. But usually we highly restrict housing from existing in such places, and we strict zoning prevents mixing of residential and commercial in areas that did not have it before these restrictions became prevalent in the last century.

So, I should never drive? Not OP, but I experience the same thing. Driving just makes me tired. I've tried running A/C at full cold, caffeine, loud music, audiobooks, etc. Nothing helps. The strange thing is, outside of driving I don't get tired or want to fall asleep except at bedtime. I don't drive when I'm drowsy. Driving make me drowsy. The bad thing about it is I usually don't realize that I'm getting sleepy until after I've dozed off once. Then I've got to keep myself awake long enough to get to the next rest stop. 20 minute nap and I'm good to go for another few hours.

> The bad thing about it is I usually don't realize that I'm getting sleepy until after I've dozed off once.

I'm not trying to be rude, but this sounds reckless. You absolutely should not be driving while you have this issue. Also, consider that you may have a sleep disorder.

I appreciate that this sucks if you live in an environment that requires you to drive, but you are way too blasé about something that runs a decent risk of killing someone, and is absolutely not normal.

> The bad thing about it is I usually don't realize that I'm getting sleepy until after I've dozed off once

In England this knowledge potentially tips your actions from accidental death into manslaughter.

You need to fix this.

As other people have said.. yes, you should never drive until you get this issue taken care of.

> The bad thing about it is I usually don't realize that I'm getting sleepy until after I've dozed off once.

This sounds pretty dangerous

Imagine if the parent poster falls asleep at the wheel and does injure or kill someone. They could point to the fact that it's never happened before, but if the court can subpoena Tesla to get data that indicates this guy dozes off with some regularity (and can see indications that he knew about it), then he's going to face a harsher sentence, possibly even bumping it up from involuntary manslaughter to second degree murder if they can argue that it was extremely reckless disregard.

Like, there should already be a lot of this kind of data out there to nail drivers to the wall post-crash, and you just don't really see it happening. Even when someone is killed, everyone involved basically shrugs, says it was a fluke, and tells the family they should get over it and move on (watch for the phrase "came out of nowhere" as a sign that everyone involved has checked out of a particular case).

And how much will consumers accept a car that tattles on them about their bad behaviour? People already lose their minds over provably-effective external automated enforcement measures which rely on plate reading like red light cams and average speed cams.

You're shouting at a wall.

People think "drowsy" isn't a problem, the same way they think that texting and driving isn't a problem because they saw someone jump backwards in slow motion in The Matrix.

Drowsy driving is no better than buzzed driving, which legally is drunk driving.

If you know you can't drive in a safe manner, you shouldn't drive at all.

And will it be easier to make those ends meet when you are dead, or paralysed, or locked up because you left someone else dead or paralysed?

The arguments that a few people are making here, as if not driving while so tired you might fall asleep would cause some devastating loss to society and herald the end of life as we know it, are just silly. Only a very small number of drivers would be affected, because fortunately most people aren't so irresponsible in the first place. And given the extremely high likelihood of those few drivers getting themselves and, worse, possibly many other people injured or dead, with all the negative consequences that will imply, it still doesn't make sense from a greater good perspective.

Oftentimes for people forced to work 2, 3, 4 or more jobs just to survive, these are also acceptable "solutions" to the problem. The risk analysis comes down to [low chance of dying now driving impaired] versus [medium chance of dying later, homeless/starving after losing job(s)].

I once arrived at work with blood all over my face, neck, and hands from biting my lips to stay awake.

Autopilot is so far, far, far out of reach for most people working multiple jobs that it's really a non-issue not worth debating for a long time, but the technology behind it would be a literal lifesaver if it were more widely available to the unfortunately large population of people that are forced to drive regardless of mental state in order to survive and/or provide for their families and/or other circumstances "out of their control".

Before then I walked if I had to, sometimes over a mile depending on the destination, or took public transportation.

It's not. We're talking about people's lives.

I've felt tired before and you know what I do? I nap in the parking lot. Because the remote chance I kill or maim myself or someone else is not worth the momentary discomfort. It's not fun, and sometimes people harass you, but it's far better than driving drowsy.

> reasons to be tired and drive: rotating shiftwork, working multiple jobs, caring for a newborn, caring for the sick.

None of that is an excuse to get behind a many thousand pound piece of equipment and not be able to control it.

> "You should never get behind the wheel if there's a chance you'll fall asleep!" is an absurd thing to say.

I stand behind my assertion and hope you'll come around.

> None of that is an excuse to get behind a many thousand pound piece of equipment and not be able to control it.

The choice many people are presented with is: Get in car while tired vs miss a day of work and get fired.

That's it. They have no option of public transportation, walking, no other option. It is pretty obvious what action people are going to choose. So the solution here is to make sure that people aren't put into that position. We could talk about autonomous vehicles, work from home, flex hours, etc. But the fact is that when you present people with this choice you should expect them to choose driving while tired. This does not mean that it is safe or what they should do. This is not condoning the action. This is just saying that we should expect people to make that choice.

and this is exactly my point. you think being tired is exceptional, something you just "nap" and solve. you have clearly never been exhausted for months on end. I have. I have nodded off on highways, and worked with people that fell asleep at stoplights. not everyone gets to have 9 hours of sleep and then work 8 hours in a chair.

> None of that is an excuse to get behind a many thousand pound piece of equipment and not be able to control it.

i'm glad youre so concerned about public safety, but those people are probably more concerned about eating and paying rent (or their infant, or dying parent, etc).

> I stand behind my assertion and hope you'll come around.

this isnt about me or my opinion. there are literal millions of people that simply cannot do what you propose (and millions more that will not because they dont share your opinion in the grayer areas), despite your objection that "None of that is an excuse". you seem to be confused about what options people have.

Having children is a choice, and sometimes people back themselves into untenable situations. You can't use children as an excuse to put the lives of others at risk. Realize what you're saying here.

People driving cars they can't afford to upkeep are also risking themselves and others.

Yes, it sucks. I empathize. I shouldn't be throwing stones. But if I'm a juror on a vehicular homicide case I'm not going to think less of deaths that were caused because the defendant had children to take to school. It would be more compelling than a DUI case, but it doesn't bring people back to life.

Obviously this line of thought has devolved pretty far from the original point as someone who can afford a car with driver drowsiness detection can probably afford to make different choices. It's just the idea that no one should ever drive when they have even a slight risk of falling asleep seems quite unrealistic, at least in the US.

Personally, I can find myself a bit tired by the end of the day. I've never felt at risk of falling asleep while driving, but I'm human, so can't say with certainty that it will never happen. Maybe a driver aid will lull some into driving when they know they shouldn't, but I still think it will be a net win (just like seat belts).

>this isnt about me or my opinion. there are literal millions of people that simply cannot do what you propose

What so we're in some kind of hunger games now? "I have to kill your family so that I can feed mine"?.

Some options: Stay home, stay hungry, get fired, take a lower paying job, go on welfare, go live in the jungle if you have to, Just.. don't kill my family.

No it isn't? We expect drivers to be able to react to situations that can arise when your driving a ton of metal and plastic. 24 hours w/o sleep is equivalent to having a BAC ~0.1%; well above the legal limit. Sure; most people aren't staying up 24 hours and going for a cross-country road trip, but you need to be aware of what affect is has on your ability to operate (https://www.cdc.gov/sleep/about_sleep/drowsy_driving.html)

Unless we first institute livable wages with sane working hours and paid commute time along with free childcare.

So that survival does not demand that people abuse their bodies with lack of sleep.

agreeing that externalities like house work, parenting, commuting exist, have cost, and need to be considered in a viable economy could be a great step.

Doughnut economics is one such approach.

https://www.ted.com/talks/kate_raworth_a_healthy_economy_sho...

It still does not justify placing the life and limbs of all other people on the road in jeopardy.

It may not be justified, but it's reality.

What? You have provided a long list of reasons not to drive. It's the law and a moral requirement that you don't go out and kill other people or yourself due to incapacitation.

People drive with varying levels of alertness, yes. But if there is a reasonable, foreseeable chance you might FALL ASLEEP, then no, of course you ABSOLUTELY should not be driving and I'm sad but not surprised that this needs to be pointed out.

You might want to brush up on the HN guidelines. Talking like that to people is never OK here, nowhere near it.

It is not, and just to be absolutely clear, none of the scenarios you mentioned justifies doing it either.

Driving while tired is comparable in effect to driving while impaired by alcohol or drugs or while distracted by devices such as phones. It can easily cause sufficient delay in reaction or error in judgement to lead to a serious accident that was entirely avoidable.

Driving while tired enough to actually fall asleep is a matter of life and death. Unless you are literally doing so in order to avoid an imminent and even greater likelihood of death -- and if you are, then I humbly suggest that it is extremely unlikely that you are truly in danger of falling asleep at the wheel yourself anyway -- you are risking the lives of everyone around you, as well as your own, and you should be treated accordingly in the eyes of the law for their benefit as well as your own. In my country, that would potentially mean multiple years in jail, a driving ban and being forced to take an extended test to demonstrate your competence again before being allowed back behind the wheel. And that's if you were lucky and got pulled over before you caused an actual accident.

The fact that this kind of policy would do net negative damage is trivial to arrive at, and is exactly why no country has ever stopped people with this issue from driving even though the issue itself is well known. The 'shouldn't be driving' mindset is tunnel visioning and swatting a fly in your house with a nuclear missile.

The fact that anyone going against that viewpoint is getting downvoted makes it pretty clear that HN is trending towards reddit where downvotes have become an 'I disagree' button. It's been pretty sad watching this trend play out over the last couple of years.