A fatigued driver is as bad as a drink-driver

Everyone has to bring their best element on the road, be they passengers, pedestrians, but more so when they are drivers.

This speaks to their physical disposition, health and mind. The traffic scene is ever abuzz with activities, road users and a plethora of mistakes, which may come from either part on the road.

For that reason, it is imperative to be vigilant at all times especially for the driver who may have a passenger on board, another vehicle following or an innocent pedestrian correctly crossing the road in front of him.

Vigilance can be disposed, in traffic, by this one driver who is alert to situations and circumstance and ready to thwart any human error that may interpose itself in traffic.

While road users, drivers for that matter, have always guarded themselves against driving under the influence of alcohol, they have failed to realise that mental alertness is as much an integral part of fitness on the road as driving sober.

For that reason, drivers come onto the road with all sorts of mental challenges such as anger, road rage, depression, chatting on the cellphone while driving; all of which subject them to erratic driving and poor judgement in execution.

Nothing is as undermined as a threat when driving like fatigue, which may have been induced by hard physical labour before driving, inadequate sleep or long driving hours.

Anyone who ventures unto the road amid fatigue in his body and mind is a traffic hazard like the driver who shall be executing any move on the road under the influence of intoxicating substances. In the flow of traffic, a fatigued driver may be excessively slow because he may have lost concentration and not aware they are literally driving at the slowest speed.

This will disturb other drivers but the worst of the action is that it may cause rear-smashes. Some fatigued drivers will suddenly sleep while their vehicles are at excessive speed. A plethora of errors from losing control, hitting into other vehicles and fatalities are possible.

A number of lives and serious injuries have been caused due to fatigue of the drivers who choose to be on the road instead of being in their beds, sleeping.

Take a deserved rest

The human body can only take a certain amount of hours behind the wheel, but not more than your muscles will allow you.

Long distances and the will to arrive have compelled drivers to drive long distances without stopping to relax the bodies. 

It is important to make intermittent stops as one drives for water, coffee even and stretch around in the event you are the only who can drive through that long distance.

Alcohol itself, or drugs, can subject one’s body to fatigue, hence they ought not to be consumed before driving. No one should undermine the lack of sleep as a threat to fatigue before driving.

Often time, drivers would deny themselves sleep for the entire night only to start the day by driving a vehicle.

No sooner would he be behind the wheel with all the temperatures induced in the car and fumes hitting the driver than they will fall asleep and cause accidents.