Is drowsy driving actually as bad as drunk driving?

You never drive after you’ve been drinking. Even if you have one drink, you always take a cab home.

However, you consistently drive when you’re tired. That commute to work can be tough early in the morning or after a long day. You know it’s not the best way to drive, but is it really that bad?

The National Sleep Foundation warns that driving when you’re too tired really isn’t that different than driving when you’re drunk. In fact, they have found a correlation between a certain amount of hours being awake and your blood alcohol concentration, discovering that being tired impacts your body in the same way as raising your BAC.

For example, if you stay up for 18 hours in a row, the way you drive is similar to a person who has a BAC of .05. Your reaction times may be slowed and mistakes are more likely.

Granted, the legal limit is 0.08. How long does it take to reach that level? The NSF says you’ll be past that if you stay awake for 24 hours in a row. At that point, it’s like your BAC is all the way up to .10.

So, while being a bit tired on the way home may not be an issue, pushing your body to any sort of extreme is seriously dangerous, both to you and others on the road.

Have you been hit by a driver who was too tired and perhaps nodded off behind the wheel? It’s a risk that can’t be overlooked, and you must know if you have a legal right to seek financial compensation for medical bills, pain and suffering and more.

Source: National Sleep Foundation, “Drowsy Driving vs. Drunk Driving: How Similar Are They?,”