If you didn't know that daylight saving time ended this weekend, you’re probably way too early for work. Yesterday marked the end of daylight saving time, and you should have dialed your clocks back one hour.
These days, many of our clocks reset automatically. The time on your smartphone and your computer should have adjusted on their own, but the clock in your car probably needs to be reset manually.
The biannual changing of the clocks, an outdated and unnecessary tradition that many people have given up altogether, can actually create some problems that you might not be aware of. Daylight saving time, whether it's beginning or ending, can throw off your internal clock and make it difficult for you to get enough sleep. Drowsiness around the time change can be more than a little inconvenient, it can actually be dangerous.
One thing that makes drowsy driving so dangerous is that people don’t always take it seriously. Drunk driving is dangerous, and everybody knows it. Drivers know that operating a vehicle in an altered state is foolish and dangerous. However, while drowsy driving is dangerous, many drivers don’t consider it as such. They fight through the yawns and figure that being tired isn’t enough to keep them from driving.
Drowsy driving is more dangerous than people realize, and there have been studies that show that driving while fatigued or drowsy can be as dangerous as driving while intoxicated. There are more than 100,000 police-reported crashes that occur directly because of fatigued driving. According to the National Sleep Foundation, these crashes result in 1,550 deaths, 71,000 injuries, and over $12.5 billion in monetary losses.
Be sure to get enough sleep over the next few weeks while your internal clock readjusts to the time change. It can be easy to lose track of time and stay up too late at night. Crashes from fatigue are most common in adults between the ages of 18-29. Make sure that you get enough sleep, no matter what your age is, and avoid driving while drowsy.
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