AS DEADLY AS DRIVING DRUNK THE SHOCKING STATISTICS BEHIND DRIVING WHILE DROWSY
Driving under the influence of alcohol is a huge problem across our country, and we should do everything in our power to combat it. However, something else greatly impairs our driving and gets a lot less attention: sleep deprivation. While one study from November 2019 found that roughly 2% of American adults admitted to driving drunk in the previous month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that twice as many adults (roughly 4%) have fallen asleep at the wheel in that same time period. This is an alarming statistic, especially since sleep-deprived drivers can exhibit similar behaviors to drunk drivers when they’re behind the wheel — leading to some very similar accidents. In fact, driving without any sleep in the previous 18 hours impairs drivers as much as having a blood alcohol content (BAC) of 0.05. That goes up to 0.1 if the driver hasn’t slept in 24 hours, 0.02 points beyond the legal limit.
While most tired drivers probably aren’t driving after being awake between 18–24 hours, drivers who get even six or seven hours of sleep the previous night are twice as likely to get into an accident as drivers who get the recommended eight hours of sleep. These figures have manifested themselves on our roads in some devastating ways. In 2013, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that drowsy driving was responsible for roughly 72,000 car crashes, 44,000 injuries, and 800 deaths. However, because drowsy driving figures are difficult to measure, the number of deaths caused by exhausted motorists could be closer to 6,000 every year. So, the next time you’re behind the wheel, look for signs of exhaustion. Are you yawning or blinking a lot? Are you having trouble
remembering the last few miles of road? Are you drifting onto the rumble strip? If so, the safe thing to do is to pull over and rest or have another passenger drive for a while. If you’ve been injured by a drowsy motorist, give Shuttlesworth Law Firm a call at (205) 286-9102. We’ll make sure you’re fairly compensated for your losses.
FACTOID STRANGE WHICH CAME FIRST: THE COLOR OR THE FRUIT?
TAKE A BREAK
the citrus fruit, pomme d’orange . The oldest recorded use of the English word “orange” as a color was to describe the color of some clothing purchased for Margaret Tudor in 1502. Before that, objects that we would call “orange” today were simply referred to as “red-yellow” or something similar.
Did you know that an orange was called an orange before orange was a color? You read that right — the name of the fruit was the inspiration for the name of the color, not the other way around, as you might have guessed. Until about 500 years ago, the color orange simply did not exist as a concept.
The name for the word in English came from the old French term for
Orange you glad we have a better name for that color now?
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