Signs of fatigue and how to avoid it

For some, insom­nia is tor­ture and pun­ish­ment. And for those who have to spend a long time behind the wheel, sleep is dan­ger­ous — sleep at the wheel. More than a third of all acci­dents and road acci­dents occur due to dri­ver fatigue.

Vaca­tions and vaca­tion trips are ahead — to a coun­try house in the sub­urbs or by auto­tourists in Europe. Any trip longer than 5 hours can be con­sid­ered a long trip. Espe­cial­ly if the dri­ver usu­al­ly dri­ves short­er dis­tances and is not used to long dri­ving.

Signs of overwork

• It becomes dif­fi­cult to con­cen­trate. You notice that you do not remem­ber how you drove the last sec­tion of the road, you stop notic­ing traf­fic signs. The gaze is fixed some­where on the hori­zon, and it is dif­fi­cult to trans­fer it to the vis­i­bil­i­ty zone in front of the hood.
• There is a desire to move as lit­tle as pos­si­ble, and hold the steer­ing wheel with one fin­ger.
• Blink­ing becomes slow — you don’t want to open your eyes. Dry in the mouth.
• I want to change the posi­tion of the body, stretch.

Pas­sen­gers may notice that the dri­ver’s respons­es become less intel­li­gi­ble and fol­low with some delay. The car can often be brought to the side of the road, then to the oncom­ing lane, the dri­ver does not keep the dis­tance well, the move­ment occurs at an unsta­ble speed.

How to avoid overwork

• Before the road, be sure to get a good night’s sleep.
• Do not take any drugs that reduce the abil­i­ty to con­cen­trate. Such drugs are often pre­scribed for the pre­ven­tion and treat­ment of depres­sion, hyper­ten­sion, aller­gies, colds, etc.
• You need to stop every 2–3 hours to warm up or just wash your­self with cold water (prefer­ably car­bon­at­ed, tick­ling gas bub­bles enhances the effect)
• Make sure the cab­in is not too warm. It is use­ful to open the win­dow — fresh air invig­o­rates bet­ter than ener­gy drinks.
• Before a long jour­ney, you need prop­er nutri­tion: enough high-calo­rie, but not too plen­ti­ful and heavy.
• Take a com­pan­ion and talk to him. If the pas­sen­ger begins to nod off, send him to the back seat so that he does not put him to sleep with his appear­ance.
• If there is music or radio, you need to either change sta­tions and musi­cal styles, or alter­nate sound and silence.
• It is bet­ter not to drink ener­gy drinks. Nat­ur­al cof­fee or strong tea is health­i­er.
• It is very invig­o­rat­ing to knead the mus­cles in the cer­vi­cal-col­lar zone.

Expe­ri­enced dri­vers say that reg­u­lar rest stops and warm-ups do not length­en the jour­ney time very much, but they sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce the like­li­hood fall asleep at the wheel from fatigue and gen­er­al­ly nowhere to come.