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-   -   Drowsiness & Sleepy Driving: The silent killer on Indian roads (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/road-safety/182716-drowsiness-sleepy-driving-silent-killer-indian-roads-10.html)

:)

My experience is quite the opposite. I make it a point not to read, see, listen or even think about accidents before embarking on out of town journeys. It kind of darkens my mood. Till very recently, when I had to post something, I wouldn't even glance at the 'Accidents' thread.

Back in the days when I used to ride long (relatively) distances on my bike, if ever I felt sleepy, I would sing loudly. Partly because of my brain getting activated and partly because I was a horrible singer, I would wake up completely stupid:.

I am an early bird. I enjoy driving really early in the morning. Of late, I have started feeling confident doing night journeys too. The 30-45 minute period soon after lunch on hot, sunny days is my Achilles heel. But that is just a minor irritant and can be got rid of with a vigorous washing of my face.

"Trouble remembering the last few km driven; missing exits or traffic signs". This pointer has become my constant self-check protocol during long drives. In the recent 600Km drive from Chennai, it helped me understand my capability and increase my tolerance levels. I started maintaining lesser speed, and chose to take short snoozes whenever I sense that its getting out of hand.
The point I would like to add is the effect of auxiliary lighting on lessening the fatigue on the highways. I suffered a lot on my Figo 1.5D during my daily commute, which involved night driving every single day. I fixed 4 hella 500 lights pointed at the road, not blinding the oncoming traffic. This greatly reduced the fatigue and irritation during the night driving.

Hello dailydriver,
Your post came as the proverbial shower after a parched day! My sentiments exactly - it was a relief reading someone almost taking the words out of my mouth!
We do a fair amount of touring & also - like you - like starting early. We no longer drive after dark - my eye-sight is no longer 6X6, and after a major shunt on the Sitapur-Bareilly road outside Lucknow a couple of years ago, we decided prudence was the better part of valour.

Early dawn I find is the best part of the day for being on the highway, and we try to make the best of it. And now that I'm out of harness after almost 40 years at sea, we find all the time in the world not to race against time, not to maintain tight schedules - in fact we pause as much as we like to smell the roses!

I had a near miss due to sleepy driving of a moron exactly a week ago. I picked up my daughter and the two of us were going back home in our Zest XMA and we took the ORR at the financial district. In a few minutes, I would have taken the exit no.3 at Patancheru. I was driving on the extreme right lane, by the side of the divider and I was doing around 90 K. All three lanes to my left are empty and the nearest vehicles were at least a kilometer away when I checked the rear view mirror just a minute before. I wanted to change lanes to the left in order to take the exit. I was just checking my left ORVM in preparation for the lane change. Suddenly, out of the blue, a moron in a wagon R had caught up with me in my lane. Instead of overtaking me from any of the three lanes on my left, he just rear ended me!

No horn, no nothing; just a sudden double impact to my rear. I never saw him coming. I was focused on the left lanes. You don't expect somebody to rear end you when you are cruising on 90 K. On impact, I instinctively hit the brakes (this may be a mistake) and this caused a second impact within a fraction of a second. The second impact caused the rear wheels to go out of line and my car violently swerved left and nearly went into a spin. Both wheels on the right were actually airborne for a couple of seconds and the car almost rolled over. I don't know how I got the control back. I and my daughter were extremely fortunate on three counts:
1. The car didn't hit the divider.
2. There was no vehicle on any of the other three lanes.
3. The car didn't roll over

The moron was speeding away and I gave chase. He exited at Patancheru and sped on through the toll booth towards Muthangi without paying toll. (The barricades at these toll booths on ORR are always open.) I always keep the change ready for the toll, so I just threw the toll into the booth and continued following him. I caught up with him and blocked him, but he got off the road, got ahead of me, and continued speeding. I chased him again and this time I blocked him near the Muthangi petrol pump. He drove into the petrol pump in a bid to escape me, but this time he was totally blocked by other vehicles in the pump.

I got down and pulled him out of the car. This moron was driving with his aged parents on board and he pulled all these stunts. I demanded for his driving license, I literally had to pull it out of his purse. I then asked him to follow me to Patancheru Police station.

I narrated the incident to the Station officer there. When he was asked for explanation, this moron admitted that he dozed off at the wheel.
To err is human and it can happen to anyone. But what rankled me is the fact that he didn't bother to stop and tried to escape. If our car had rolled over, he would have left us for dead.

The moron is a student, hence the Station officer asked me not to register a case, since this might disrupt his academic calendar. There was no major damage to my car; just a misaligned bumper. So I agreed not to file a case.

The station officer made him do 50 sit ups in front of me and my daughter and his parents. He was struggling after 30, but the Station officer did not relent. Some of his friends and relatives arrived at the station when he was doing the sit ups. They tried talking to the officer, but he did not listen to them. He made sure that the sit ups are completed. He said he cannot let the moron go scot free after causing what could be a fatal accident and not stopping to own up responsibility. My respect for Hyderabad police has increased manifold.

Hi Guys,

I drive long distances daily, 110 Kms to be precise and hence regularly make it a point to be well rested the previous night so I can reach to work fresh. But sometimes still, late nights can't be avoided and I end up feeling dull.

Heres a neat trick I learned online to keep yourself alert without even letting the passengers know and get panicky.

The moment you feel dull or as if your eyes are about to shut, lightly tickle the inside top of your mouth with the tip of your tongue, exactly following the centerline from your gums just above & between the front 2 teeth to the top centre. I've found this technique to be very useful, and amusingly enough, this area I'm talking about gets extra ticklish when you're sleepy. 1 sweep is good for the next 2 to 3 min.. and its frankly not a big headache while driving to do it every 2 to 3 min or so. When you're sleepy the tickling sensation is very strong and you cant help but immediately open lazy drowsy eyes wide open as if you've taken a drug or something.

Regarding the best recommended remedy for sleepiness i.e. taking a power nap, here is something that could help. Listen to your favorite guided meditation or meditation music audio with the windows closed and engine running with AC in a rest stop or restaurant parking lot. I prefer doing this as otherwise, I am not able to take a nap due to the ambient noise and the sound of passing vehicles. It is most effective after a meal. Using a noise canceling headset for listening to the audio dramatically increases the effectiveness.

Set an alarm to wake up of course! If your power nap turns into a 4..5 hour sound sleep and you get caught at a highway rest stop miles from your stopping place, with darkness coming on .. that's not fun.

When I am forced to take a short snooze, I choose to leave a two inch gap in the window to avoid Carbon monoxide poisoning. The symptoms of CO poisoning is drowsiness. So there might be a possibility of aggravating the slow poisoning by CO, when we close the windows and keep the engine running for AC. Concerning number of cases were reported where people have died sleeping in their cars because of this.

Usually I used to notch up the AC to mitigate fatigue induced drowsiness. That keeps the car cool enough for the few minutes of sleep. It also doubles up as an alarm when the cabin heats up, becomes uncomfortable and wakes me up.

The parking area should be preferably safe or we need to have some form of self-defense in our hands(I prefer cobra pepper spray) to increase peace of mind which aids short and deep sleep.

Unconventional hack to eliminate drowsiness: HOLDING YOUR BREATH.

This is something I read about long time back, but had an opportunity to try it out recently. It works well! Whenever you feel sleepy or drowsy, this is what you need to do -

1) Take a deep breath.
2) Hold your breath for as long as possible. Till your face turns red.
3) Start breathing again.

Repeat if necessary. This will clear your head immediately.

Old life hack, in which the physiology is that one effectively builds up carbon dioxide in the bloodstream (hypercapnea). This causes the heart to beat faster (tachycardia). However, the resultant alertness is short-lived, as the heart tries to compensate by slowing down (bradycardia) and reducing oxygen consumption in response to the carbon dioxide buildup.

So the alertness would last just a few minutes, enough to get one to a safe area, park and take a powernap or longer snooze. This hack won't allow one to continue a long drive through the night in case one is feeling drowsy - the bradycardia will allow microsleep to set in earlier than usual, which is certainly undesirable! I've tried this, and it makes things worse over time. Hyperventilating helps though.

God, I need this thread. I was driving on NH536 (past Karaikudi, towards Rameshwaram and Dhanushkodi). From my hotel in Karaikudi so hardly a three hour drive. And I had got enough sleep yesterday - but was climbing up and down a steep flight of stairs to the Kundrakudi temple which is atop a small hill. Didn't feel tired.

The road is a newly laid two lane - gloriously smooth but wtih tons of hairpin bends, none of them clearly marked and some very sharp indeed. On one such bend my eyes suddenly closed momentarily and wham, I'd skidded off the bend and down a small sloping embankment on the opposite side of the curve. With my rear wheel resting in a small pit so I couldn't get it out myself. The shock jolted me awake fast enough to react and stop turning turtle thank god. That spot is apparently a well known one for accidents (around 14..15 km from Ramnad).

Plenty of locals were around in the nearby fields and they rushed over, used a spade to loosen some mud down so that the pit under my rear wheel was partially filled in, and I could extract the car.

No damage that I could see thank god (after checking by placing the car on a lift at the MRF tyredrome in Ramnad, except a tiny surface scratch on the underbody - and my rear wheels needed alignment and balancing. The wheels and axle remained untouched and the vehicle felt smooth at the 60-80 that I stuck to on the curving road (and indeed, staying around 60 at the time of the crash because of the hairpin bends and frequent oncoming bus traffic was what saved me I think)

No pictures sorry. I was too shaken at the time and later too busy checking that the car was ok :) . I am not particularly religious but I suppose going the round of various temples over the past 2..3 days (plenty in and around this region!) might have helped. Thank God anyway.

Here is news that dehydration can be as bad as DUI. Apparently, it can double the number of mistakes on the road. Stay hydrated people.

http://www.express.co.uk/life-style/...-car-UK-Nissan

Very true.
Also the advantage of drinking water while driving is that it forces people like me to take a break.

I try and finish a liter every two hours at a minimum. Drinking at every toll gate.

I must do that. I take only a few sips occasionally because I don’t particularly enjoy peeing by the roadside if I’m caught short with no toilet nearby.

Got to increase intake thanks for the reminder.

I had been sweating a lot after climbing down the temple on a humid afternoon.

Sincerely hoping that my paternal uncle doesn't read Tbhp, or this particular post as he fell asleep at the wheel once in 2013 and fatalities were involved.

My dad was visiting my uncle in Sivagangai in April 2013 to distribute my upcoming wedding's invitations to family around Madurai. In between, they decided to take our aged grandma to her gerontologist in Madurai by my uncle's Swift Vxi (no airbags/ABS). My uncle fell asleep on the way home to Sivagangai and the following was the net result:
* The car fell into a ditch by the roadside and came to a hardstop against some tough shrubs
* My uncle, aunt and two little girls all sustained minor injuries
* My dad who used to get angry at suggestions to wear his seat-belt wasn't wearing it in the front passenger seat at the time and he went head-first onto the windscreen. I went to the Maruti service center later to retrieve his mobile phone and saw the windshield had a circular impact point as if a baseball had hit it there....he was unconscious for 24 hours with no memory of the incident. He also had to have a metal rod in his left forearm.
* My grandmom was seated in the middle section of the backseat at the time and she rocketed to the front of the car and suffered the worst. Multiple facial, hip and femur fractures and surgeries later, she expired sadly...

As i said, all this happened around mid-April. My dad underwent surgery and was able to attend my wedding.

My wedding went on as planned on May 12 - 13th 2013. but unknown to us, my grandmom passed away on May 13th exactly at the time when I tied the knot with my wife...some of my relatives hid the news from us till about 2 weeks later.

To die in an accident is no way to go...worst of all is the guilt my uncle carries to this day.