Impaired driving is a killer. Impaired drivers, whether knowingly or not, are putting both themselves, their passengers, and bystanders in incredible danger by getting behind the wheel and shifting into drive. Many people assume that drunk or drug-related driving is the only type of impaired driving that can be dangerous. This mindset is what creates most of the danger. Humans, if taught nothing different, often develop an invincibility complex. In terms of driving, they assume that nothing bad will ever happen to them because “they are a good driver” or “they practice defensive driving.” One of the biggest problems with impaired driving is that drivers do not realize what can impair their driving, but also what their impaired driving can set into motion. 

A wider range of impaired drivers are on the road than people realize. People report swerving cars for texting or drunk-driving and call the police for an unconscious driver. They disclose open containers, drugs they see in cars, and drivers texting. But there is a fourth kind of impaired driver that is so often overlooked: a fatigued driver. Due to the current work and education culture in the United States, many peoples’ lives are out of balance, resulting in lack of sleep and rest of the mind and body. High school students go to bed in the early morning hours and wake up 5 or 6 hours later, working professionals work 80 hour weeks, parents stay awake through the night with their children and drive to work the next morning. After 16 hours awake, your mental function is the same as yourself if you were legally drunk. At 24 hours awake, your reaction times are slower or nonexistent. Only sleeping 6 hours a night for 10 days straight has the same effect as being awake for 24 hours straight. There are people living these statistics, and even more living extremes or somewhere in between. 

I know these statistics because I was one. My senior year of high school, I was taking four AP classes, was dual enrolled, was working two jobs, volunteering every week, and competing in rock climbing. To keep up with my hectic schedule, I was sleeping 6 hours a night or less, and only adding a few more hours a night on weekends. Everyone around me was living the same story, and I was just trying to push through the end of senior year. One morning, two months short of graduation, I was driving to my high school with my 16 year old brother in the passenger seat. I was driving a road I have seen a million times, and my mind started to drift. I woke up when my tires hit the gravel on the side of the road. My eyes snapped open and I regained control of the vehicle, narrowing missing a mailbox and the ditch on the side of the road. I had been asleep at the wheel.

I could have killed my brother that I would take a bullet for. I could have totaled the car that I had bought by myself with the money that I had made working two jobs. I could have injured myself or my brother in a crash that would end either or both of our athletic careers. I could have killed myself just one month after accepting my admission to the college of my dreams. People do not realize the danger of impaired driving until they live it. I lived it. I see it. And I have not, and never will, drive impaired ever again.

This terrifying experience is still vivid in my mind a year later, and despite my initial embarrassment and denial of what had truly happened, I believe that sharing my story and being able to reach even one more person with my message is so much more important than my emotions about my massive mistake. I seek to reach teenagers whose high school years are a mirror-image of my own: driven, ambitious, well-rounded, high-achieving, but most of all, overworked. Especially with teenagers getting their licenses in high school alongside trying to juggle courseload and other commitments, fatigue needs to be highlighted as impaired driving in driver education. But in schools, peers and leaders need to greater emphasize the importance of sleep and rest. Sleep is how the mind rejuvenates and resets itself for another day of use. Without it, students are only creating unhealthy and unsafe situations for themselves and others. Fatigue impaired driving, let alone living, is all too normalized in contemporary society. People, but especially teenagers – who are known sceptics – need to be shown the potential consequences of impaired driving and encouraged to consider the true effects that impaired driving can have not only on themselves, but other people: passengers, family, friends, bystanders, other drivers.

In order to get through to youth, I think that teenagers need to hear real-life stories and the reflection that follows after driving impaired from people who look like them, talk like them, have lived like them, struggled like them, and understand what they are going through. By creating an open conversation around impaired driving and increasing education about the potential consequences, I think that more people can become informed about impaired driving and make a safe decision before deciding to get behind the wheel.