ABSTRACT
The difficulty in obtaining clear data about the prevalence of fatigue during driving has led to an underestimation of the severity of the problem until relatively recently. Although any estimate of the prevalence of fatigue related accidents is likely to be little more than speculation, it seems reasonably clear that driving while fatigued is a widespread phenomenon. The solution to fatigue for the general public is reasonably simple: stop and sleep. In real life, fatigue often occurs in conjunction with alcohol consumption, for two reasons: people tend to drink in the evening and nighttime, when they are already tired; and alcohol has a sedative effect on the CNS, thus promoting fatigue in its own right. The general pattern suggested by reviews of accident statistics is that although fatigue accounts for a relatively small proportion of the overall total number of crashes, it plays a part in a reasonably large proportion of fatal ones.
