Risk factor and coping strategy for driving accidents due to elevated sleepiness

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Series of our study revealed that longer elapsed time, shorter sleep duration (less than 6hours) and existence of habitual snoring/nocturnal apnea episodes were independently associated with the experience of vehicular accidents among general drivers. This finding suggest that early treatment of sleep disordered breathing (SDB) and securing sufficient amount of nocturnal sleep is necessary to prevent sleepiness related traffic accidents. Our study also showed that among occupational drivers the prevalence of shift work related sleepiness is higher than that of SDB related sleepiness. However, they seem not to take counter measure effective for reducing their sleepiness even when they are in a sleepy condition because they do not have enough time for taking a rest possibly due to their workload.