People continue to drive even when they know they are sleepy. Recent research has shown that self assessed driving while sleepy is a powerful predictor of serious road traffic accidents. This suggests that drivers' awareness of their sleepiness while driving is not sufficient to prevent them from having road traffic accidents.

Messages on prevention should therefore focus on convincing sleepy drivers to stop driving and sleep before resuming their journey.

The association between self assessed driving while sleepy and the risk of serious road traffic accidents has been examined by French researchers and their findings draw our attention to a preventable cause of deaths and serious injury caused by road accidents.

More interesting recent findings were published as well showing discordance between official police statistics about death and injury because of road traffic accidents and data collected form hospital. The objective of the researchers from Oxford University and South East Public Health Group in Surrey England, was to compare trends in the numbers of people with serious traffic injuries according to police statistics and hospital episode statistics.

The conclusion was that the overall fall seen in police statistics for non-fatal road traffic injuries probably represents a fall in completeness of reporting of these injuries.

We are presenting to you this recent interesting research in the article Driving while sleepy that you will find attached with our 41st monthly Progressive Newsletter.

Our conclusion is that in practical and policy terms, much more needs to be done to ensure that there are real and substantial reductions in serious injuries not only on England's roads but as well in many other countries of the world.
 
Takis A. Haggiandreou
Director

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