Falling asleep behind the wheel

There are reststops here and there. If one is not nearby, simply pull into an open gas station to either get a drink of coffee or take a 15minute nap with your doors locked. It's usually easy to pick out the sleepy drivers and quickly pass them up before they pull into you.

A bad, bad habit. In 1973, my best friend Ken fell asleep behind the wheel of his Volkswagon and ran head on into a parked car. My head took out the windshield and I got a bad concussion. If I hadn't been every bit as drunk as he was I might have woke him up.

This isn't a bad driving habit...it is using bad judgement BEFORE driving.  My brother's best friend was killed this way (back in the 70's) because he was in high school and working.  Burning the candle at both ends, he was driving home from work one night and fell asleep at the wheel.

I would hope you would be smart enough to either wake the hell up,  or take a nap before it got this bad.

By all means, if this is a habit, GET SOME HELP!  Or, better yet, get some SLEEP at HOME.  If you have to be somewhere and you have to press on, then at least stop, get out of the car, walk around, do some jumping jacks, anything to help you wake back up!

I swear by Thor's Holy Helmet, that people who habitually do this stunt soon leave the driving pool.

HABIT?!?!!! Jesus Baldheaded Tapdancing Christ I hope not. Most folks who do this once don't get a chance to do it again.

Usually a habit that is corrected with a body bag.

I was once rear-ended by an idiot who fell asleep on the highway. Luckily, I was driving a pickup truck and I came out fine and so did the truck, despite being hit at 60 MPH! The other car on the other hand was a total wreck. Surprisingly, the other driver came out fine also. Talk about a bad wake call! Falling asleep while driving shouldn't be a habit! Usually it's a one time kind of deal. Sleep before you get behind the wheel, not while you're driving or operating heavy machinery of any kind.

Never thought this would apply to responsible me, but for one scary day in my life I cheated the horrid consequences of this. This was an hour after I'd eaten a huge meal during a long trip on a mostly empty rural highway. The calm monotone of the Book on Tape also had a lulling effect on me. At my first sign of nodding off, I should have pulled over until I could be more alert. Instead, I pressed on. Though I never drifted from my traffic lane, I recall jerking back to consciousness just in time to see I was about to slam into a truck that was stopped at a rare traffic light on the highway. My reflexes were just good enough to quickly throw my car into the empty lane beside me. I was hugely fortunate that lane was empty and that no cars were in the intersection I barreled through. Left me shaken for days, while I did some serious soul searching to how none of us are invulnerable. If this can happen to an otherwise careful driver like me, than most anyone can have a point in the... Read more