Microsleep and Power Naps
The accident happened because the driver fell asleep. How can so many people fall asleep while driving, I’ve always wondered?! Turns out my question is valid, as Matthew Walker writes in his wonderful book, Why We Sleep . The number of people “falling completely asleep at the wheel” is rare. (That would require severe sleep deprivation, 24 hours or longer without sleep). What’s far more common is something called “microsleep”: “During a microsleep, your brain becomes completely blind to the outside world for a brief moment – and not just the visual domain, but in all channels of perception.” It is suffered by individuals who are chronically sleep restricted (getting less than 7 hours of sleep on a regular basis). Scarily, a microsleep lasts for as little as 2 seconds. Yes, that’s right: 2 seconds. And you don’t even realize it happened most of the time… unless you have an accident. As Walker writes, this explains why drowsy driving causes more accidents than those caus...