The Effects Of Sleep Deprivation On Children

According to Vila (2006), data through the year 2003 indicated that more officers were killed by “unattended adverse events than during the commission of felonies.” Fatigue resulting from reduced sleep, both in duration and quality, is a significant factor in unintentional injuries and fatalities in the law enforcement community. Two hundred eighty seven (287) of the officers involved in the study reported being involved in a motor vehicle collision during the follow up period. Fatigue and drowsiness resulting from sleep disorders is believed to be a contributing factor in a significant number of these collisions. Across 2009-2010, more than a third of line of duty deaths were attributed to motor vehicle crashes (NLEMF, 2010). Sleepiness and fatigue are major factors in motor vehicle collisions and drivers suffering from excessive sleepiness are not only involved in more collisions, but the collisions are often more serious and result in more severe injuries (Drake, 2010). While, officers involved in the study regarded drowsy driving to be as serious and as dangerous as drunk driving, almost half of the participants reported falling asleep while driving 1-2 times a month due to excessive sleepiness (JAMA, 2011). The loss of only two hours of sleep over just a one week period was found to have the same decrease in performance comparable with individuals after 24 hours of staying awake.

Driver fatigue may not be illegal but it is lethal. Fatigue is a discreet killer that occurs for drivers no matter their age, their driving experience, how long the trip is or the time of day. In 2012, there were more fatigue related crashes than drink driving crashes in NSW. When someone doesn’t sleep for the previous 17 years before driving, they have an equal effect to someone who drives with a blood alcohol level of 0.05. A study by Nordbakke and Sagberg in 2007 concluded that drivers had a standard knowledge on preventative actions and the factors influencing the risk of falling asleep. But, despite this knowledge, drivers continue to drive on the road whilst tired.

In the United States 40% of car accidents are linked to lack of sleep (Souza). Sleep deprivation is a serious problem; people do not seem to care about or pay attention too. Everyone needs sleep; it is the mind and body’s natural way of restoring itself from a day’s work. There are four stages of sleep and according to The Better Sleep Council the first stage is when the mind is relaxing, and the eyes close. It is easy to wake someone during this stage, and people often feel like they are falling and suddenly jump. The second stage is when the heart rate is slowing down, and the body prepares to enter a deep sleep. Stage three is becoming more immersed in a deep sleep, approaching stage four, which is the most important. Stage four is

As a future sleep technician, and a person who has suffered personally from the aftermath of a friend falling asleep at the wheel, the topic of "drowsy driving" is one concerns me. Studies show that there has been a significant rise in sleep-related crashes since the initiation of Maggie's Law in 2003, but only one recorded

Sleep deprivation can significantly impact a driver’s ability to safely operate a motor vehicle. According to the National Sleep Foundation, people who have been awake for 18 hours exhibit the same level of impairment as

Car accidents have been a big cause of teen deaths. Traffic safety administration stated that “ Students who are sleep-deprived has reduced actions times, slower eye movements, and decreased the ability to make quick decisions. In fact, a person with fewer than four hours of sleep has the same driving characteristics as someone who is legally drunk” (Wahlstrom 3). When students are driving to school in the morning it is usually dark outside. When it is dark outside they can’t see everything. Even if they look away for one quick moment a kid could be crossing the road to get on the bus and all of sudden get hit.

Adolescent sleep deprivation is a common problem in today’s society, and it is also a very dangerous one. There have been numerous studies done to determine the causes of sleep deprivation in teenagers, the most prevalent being teens not getting enough sleep due to things like jobs and early school start times. There are many perceived dangers of this, such as sleepiness while driving and a risk for hypertension. There are a few ways to prevent these problems, ranging from parents stepping in to ensure teens get the proper amount of sleep to changing school start times to a later hour. Adolescent sleep deprivation is something that everyone, parents and teens alike, should

So as long as I’ve been driving I’ve always recalled my mother’s voice saying, “Don’t drink and drive. Sleep at a friend’s house or pay for a taxi. Don’t Do It echoing in the back of my head.” So imagine my surprise when I found out that “driver distraction is actually more important now than critical crash factors such as fatigue, drug ingestion and alcohol intoxication”. According to John Lee, author of Driver Distraction and Inattention: Advances in Research and Countermeasures, “Road vehicle crashes are predicted to become the third largest cause of death and injury globally by 2020”.

Attention: 72,000. That’s how many crashes occurred in 2013 due to drowsy driving. This number is in the US alone. Drowsy driving is a big issue, and it hasn’t been stressed enough. We’ve all heard about the risks of drinking and driving, but not many people advocate driving with a healthy amount of sleep. Having recently read an article on this topic, I was shocked by how dangerous this really is,

health.lacking sleep is a cause of depression, obesity ,and makes it hard to function in

Despite having slept for only four hours, the man claimed to have felt alert when he left home, but had entered microsleep when he drove off the road and into the victims (“Driver who killed mother, injured baby is jailed for two years,” 2016). Across the U.S., state governments are raising awareness around the dangers of driving while drowsy, mostly with “Prevention Weeks”, but sometimes with punitive laws. For example, in New Jersey it is illegal to drive if you have been without sleep for 24 hours (“Summaries of Current Drowsy Driving Laws,”2015). While it should be obvious to most that it would be irresponsible to drive under such acute sleep deprivation, cognitive deficiencies can occur in those who are chronically sleep deprived. In fact, losing just a couple of hours of sleep on a consecutive basis can be harmful. Studies show the that the effects of sleep deprivation accumulates over time and that as a “slept debt” increases, reaction time decreases (Dinges DF, Pack F, Williams K et al., 1997, as cited in Bonnet & Arand, 2003). Since the CDC estimates that up to one third of Americans between 18-60 get less than 7 hours of sleep each night (Liu et al., 2016), this is an issue many of us should be concerned

Up to 60% of Americans say they have driven while sleepy within the last year, and 37% admit to having actually fallen asleep at the wheel. The National Highway Safety Administration estimates that falling asleep while driving is responsible for around 100,000 accidents each year in the USA alone, including 71,000 injuries and over 1,500 deaths. In fact, an estimated one-fifth of all road accidents can be attributed to drowsiness, and it is possible that even this is an underestimation. This is because State reporting practices are inconsistent. There is little or no police training in identifying drowsiness as a crash factor. Every state currently addresses sleepiness in some way in their crash report forms but each of these vary from state to state and tend to be inconsistent. Something as small as the one-hour shift to daylight-saving time each spring has been associated with a 20% increase in vehicle accidents on the following Monday. Now you may be saying that it’s ridiculous that so many people could fall asleep at the wheel, after with enough willpower people can keep themselves awake. While that is true most of the time, it isn’t after about 48 hours. After 48 hours your body starts to go through something called a micro sleep every few minutes, an involuntary pass out that lasts from 5 to 10 seconds where you jolt yourself awake. This is beyond dangerous, imagine going over 30 mph like that, you’d likely crash. An even scarier fact is that 45% of all men have admitted to falling into a micro-sleep, this is most likely what causes all of those accidents mentioned

Ten percent of the American population has recorded having a sleep parasomnia, most of them being young children or adolescents. Parasomnias range from very common disorders such as sleepwalking, to a few some may have never heard of, for instance: sleep paralysis. Sleep parasomnias are “disorders characterized by abnormal or unusual behavior of the nervous system during that occur during non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep or rapid eye movement (REM) sleep” (Parasomnias). NREM sleep (also referred to as slow wave sleep) contains more common parasomnias that involve the stimulation of the autonomic nervous system, motor system, or cognitive processes. Sleep disorders most commonly present in children and young adults but tend to resolve as the patient ages. Sleep parasomnias affect the daily behavior and lifestyle of young children and adolescents by altering their learning environment, stiffening the home life, and modifying their overall mood.

It is difficult to constantly get sufficient sleep due to work and family related circumstances, and an estimated 15-30% of traffic accidents are directly related to driver drowsiness (Howard, Jackson, Kennedy, Swann, Barnes & Pierce, 2007). Sleep deprivation has been demonstrated to strongly impair mood, cognitive performance, and motor function as a result of decreasing mental impairment (Durmer & Dinges, 2005). Therefore, it will be argued that sleep deprivation substantially interferes with driving performance. This is based on the evidence given by Williamson and Feyer (2005) which found that after long periods without sleep, driving performance reached equivalent to those

Sleep and rest can also effect a person while driving. The driver needs to have enough rest in order to drive properly. According to Dr.Michael Lacey, the medical director of the Atlanta sleep medicine Clinic, fatigue can have a real impact on the brain. When a person is forced to stay awake the brain is forced to work harder. Which leaves the brain in a fog and forces them to lose concentration.