"Wake up, you've just crashed the pickup!".

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

People from 16 to 29 years old often maintain busy schedules with school, jobs, extracurricular activities, late-night socializing, night-shift work, or poor sleeping habits. As a result, they run the highest risk of having a mishap behind the wheel of a car. I learned my lesson the hard way one night in January 2007.

I had two jobs--one a night shift. I also was indulging my passion to PT. With as little as four to six hours of sleep a night, I kept telling myself I could ignore the symptoms of fatigue.

In the 24 hours before my eye-opening experience, I had worked 16 hours between my two jobs, had done five hours of PT, and had gotten a total of three hours' sleep, split between two naps. I was on my way back from an evening trip to a local shopping mall with two of my friends.

In earlier times, I usually fought drowsiness behind the wheel by rolling down the windows or playing loud music. I always kidded myself this behavior was OK, but I knew better.

While driving home from the shopping mall that night, my vision suddenly became extremely blurry, and I remember thinking I was in my bed sleeping. It was that moment when I fell asleep behind the wheel of my 2005 Chevrolet Colorado and rear-ended a white sedan in front of me. I then careened off the road, onto the shoulder, and down a dirt embankment before hitting an 8-foot-high cinder-block wall. I was going about 65 mph at the time.

I woke up to the voice of a friend telling me that we had crashed. I kicked out the door and, while getting out, wondered sleepily who had wrecked my truck. Then, suddenly, I realized I had caused the mishap. My two passengers had sustained only minor injuries (strained muscles and minor bumps and cuts); the front end of my truck, though, was destroyed.

Thirty seconds was all it had taken for me to feel drowsy, lay my head back, and fall asleep at the wheel. I could have avoided this crash if I just had paid attention to the previous warnings about fatigued driving.

An estimated 100,000 drowsy-driving crashes are reported annually. I'm now one of those statistics. I can't stop thinking about what might have happened that night. My foolishness could have caused inexplicable pain and suffering for my family, as well as others. There's no excuse for such wanton disregard for life. My hope is that others will read this story and, unlike me, make the right choice when it comes to getting a good night's rest.

Resources:

* Sleeping and Driving Don't Mix, http://www.aaafoundation.org/quizzes/ index.cfm?button=drowsyquiz

* National Sleep Foundation Drowsy Driving Prevention Week, http://www.sleepfoundation.org/ site/c.huIXKjM0IxF/b.2418857/ k.A5A7/Drowsy-Drivingorg.htm

* Introducing Doze-Alert, http://www.sav-alife.com/Doze_intro.htm? gclid=CPvMvImn1IoCFR07QAodhUfFcw

* Drowsy Driving and Automobile Crashes, http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/injury/ drowsy_driving1/drowsy.html

By SKSA Daniel Sosa,

VFA-2