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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 t

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 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.

quicklyfrozen 6y ago
You've never had a bad night's sleep? Never had to make a longish unexpected trip because of a family emergency? Never had to work 2 jobs to make ends meet? 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.
- Silhouette 6y ago
  You've never had a bad night's sleep? Never had to make a longish unexpected trip because of a family emergency? Never had to work 2 jobs to make ends meet? 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.
  - quicklyfrozen 6y ago
    If you have done those things, then you've accepted some increased risk of falling asleep, just like most of us have at one time or another. We're human and can't say for certain that falling asleep is impossible (or some other medical event won't happen). 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.
    - Silhouette 6y ago
      If you have done those things, then you've accepted some increased risk of falling asleep, just like most of us have at one time or another. 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.
- spike021 6y ago
  Then you pay for a taxi, bus, or some other mode of transportation unless you're prepared to pay both financially and emotionally for any incident you wind up causing. Both for yourself and everyone else affected. 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.
missosoup 6y ago
> Most people do not and would not drive while so tired that they knew they were likely to fall asleep while doing so 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 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.
- jhloa2 6y ago
  Exactly. I live in the US in a relatively typical suburb and the vast majority of people here don't really have an option on whether or not they drive. Our public transit is lacking, jobs are inflexible with WFH, and the majority of housing located close to where jobs are clustered is exorbitantly expensive. 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.
Mirioron 6y ago
>According to the National Sleep Foundation, about half of U.S. adult drivers admit to consistently getting behind the wheel while feeling drowsy. About 20% admit to falling asleep behind the wheel at some point in the past year – with more than 40% admitting this has happened at least once in their driving careers. From: https://www.nsc.org/road-safety/safety-topics/fatigued-driving 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.
- Silhouette 6y ago
  This is a matter of degree. The start of this thread wasn't about someone who was driving home at the end of a long day at work and feeling a little tired. It was about someone who, by their own admission, had a history of dozing off at the wheel, and wanted to knowingly continue driving while unfit to do so. 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.
scarmig 6y ago
> 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? 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.

quicklyfrozen 6y ago

You've never had a bad night's sleep? Never had to make a longish unexpected trip because of a family emergency? Never had to work 2 jobs to make ends meet? 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.

Silhouette 6y ago
You've never had a bad night's sleep? Never had to make a longish unexpected trip because of a family emergency? Never had to work 2 jobs to make ends meet? 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.
- quicklyfrozen 6y ago
  If you have done those things, then you've accepted some increased risk of falling asleep, just like most of us have at one time or another. We're human and can't say for certain that falling asleep is impossible (or some other medical event won't happen). 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.
  - Silhouette 6y ago
    If you have done those things, then you've accepted some increased risk of falling asleep, just like most of us have at one time or another. 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.
spike021 6y ago
Then you pay for a taxi, bus, or some other mode of transportation unless you're prepared to pay both financially and emotionally for any incident you wind up causing. Both for yourself and everyone else affected. 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.

missosoup 6y ago

> Most people do not and would not drive while so tired that they knew they were likely to fall asleep while doing so 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 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.

jhloa2 6y ago
Exactly. I live in the US in a relatively typical suburb and the vast majority of people here don't really have an option on whether or not they drive. Our public transit is lacking, jobs are inflexible with WFH, and the majority of housing located close to where jobs are clustered is exorbitantly expensive. 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.

Mirioron 6y ago

>According to the National Sleep Foundation, about half of U.S. adult drivers admit to consistently getting behind the wheel while feeling drowsy. About 20% admit to falling asleep behind the wheel at some point in the past year – with more than 40% admitting this has happened at least once in their driving careers. From: https://www.nsc.org/road-safety/safety-topics/fatigued-driving 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.

Silhouette 6y ago
This is a matter of degree. The start of this thread wasn't about someone who was driving home at the end of a long day at work and feeling a little tired. It was about someone who, by their own admission, had a history of dozing off at the wheel, and wanted to knowingly continue driving while unfit to do so. 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.

scarmig 6y ago

> 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? 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.