Tired drivers drive as if drunk

Almaty. January 21. Kazakhstan Today - A new study found driver tiredness after a few hours has the same effect as being behind the wheel drunk, the agency reports.

Driver tiredness after a few hours behind the wheel can have the same effect as being over the blood-alcohol limit, Dutch researchers say, Daily Mail reported.

Researchers at Utrecht University in the Netherlands say 2 hours of highway driving in the dark can affect performance the same as having a couple of drinks, Britain's Daily Telegraph reported Wednesday.

Unlike alcohol, police have no way of measuring whether a driver is affected by fatigue or to what extent, researchers say.

In the study, 14 healthy young men ages 21 to 25 drove under supervision for 2, 4 and 8 hours at a time through the night.

They had to maintain a steady 80 mph and remain in the center of their traffic lane as video recorded the safety of their driving.

The results, published in the Journal of Sleep Research, showed that after 2 hours of driving they were already making the same mistakes they would if they had 0.05 percent blood alcohol content.

At 3 hours, their performance corresponded to 0.08 percent blood alcohol content, the researchers found.

"Our data show that drivers should take sleepiness behind the wheel seriously," the researchers said in a report on their findings. "It is one of the primary causes of accidents on motorways."

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