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Can drowsy driving lead to a fatal crash?

* Brian Lefley, NHL hockey play and winning coach of the Italian national team, was killed when he dozed at the wheel and ran into an oncoming truck.

* Mike Tyson, the former heavyweight boxing champ, dumped his motorcycle when he snapped out of a snooze to find himself about to run over his traveling companion.

* Screenwriter Paul Jarrico died after his car ran off the Pacific Coast Highway, when he apparantly dozed off at the wheel driving home from a ceremony.

Source: National Sleep Foundation

But you don't have to be driving to be in a "fall-asleep crash"
John Hockenberry wasn't. Winner of many journalism awards including two Peabodys, Hockenberry is currently a correspondent on Dateline NBC.

He was a student at the University of Chicago when he got a ride while hitchhiking along a stretch of I-80. While he and the other two passengers in the car slept, the driver fell asleep at the wheel.

The car left the highway and shot down an embankment. While the other two passengers escaped serious physical injury Hockenberry had to be extricated from the car. Because of severe injuries to his spinal cord, John Hockenberry was paralyzed from the mid-chest down. He was 20 years old. The driver of the car was killed.

Source: www.hockenberry.cjb.net

Incorrect! The answer is b. 4 seconds.

A "microsleep" is falling asleep for a period as brief as 4 seconds which can occur while driving. Amazingly, in just 4 seconds, a car going 55 mph can travel over 100 yards, the length of a football field.


 

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