Tired drivers keep going, leading to accidents

NEW YORK, June 24 (Reuters) Drivers may know they are sleepy but that often doesn't stop them, and consequently they're liable to be involved in a serious accident, according to a large study of French workers.

Researchers found that self-reported driving while sleepy in the previous 12 months was a ''powerful predictor'' of serious traffic accidents over the next 3 years.

This suggests that ''drivers' awareness of their sleepiness while driving is not sufficient to prevent them from having road traffic accidents,'' warn Dr Emmanuel Lagarde, from Universite Victor Segalen, Bordeaux and colleagues in the British Medical Journal.

The findings published on Thursday, are based on responses to questions posed to some 13,300 male and female experienced drivers who were between the ages of 35 and 50 years.

In response to the question - ''in the past 12 months, have you ever driven while sleepy?'' - 63 per cent of respondents answered never, 36 percent a few times, 0.8 per cent about once per month, 0.3 per cent about once a week, and 0.2 per cent more than once a week.

The risk of serious traffic accidents rose proportionally with the frequency of self-reported driving while sleepy, the team reports.

For example, drivers who reported driving while drowsy ''a few times'' in the previous 12 months were 50 per cent more likely to have been involved in a serious traffic accident than drivers who reported not driving while sleepy over the same period. And drivers who admitted to driving while sleepy ''once a month or more often'' in the past year were nearly three times more likely to have been involved in a serious accident.

These results, Lagarde and colleagues say, are consistent with previous studies conducted in New Zealand, France, and the United States, and have ''important consequences for public safety because of the high proportion of drivers concerned.'' It's clear from this study and others that drivers can sense when they are tired, but may not act accordingly, the investigators say.

''Drivers may either underestimate the impact of sleepiness on their driving performance or overestimate their capacity to fight sleepiness,'' they write.

''Messages on prevention should therefore focus on convincing sleepy drivers to stop driving and sleep before resuming their journey,'' Lagarde and colleagues conclude.

REUTERS SBA BD1037