subject: Driving Alone [print this page] Driving Alone Driving Alone
When I am alone in my car and I am puttering around running miscellaneous errands, I like to listen to my music as loud as I want (as long as I am not driving through a residential neighborhood. Also, I can have phone conversations or simply drive in silence as I enjoy some peace and quiet after a hectic day. But there are also other times when driving by yourself is probably not the best thing in the world. For instance, when you are tired, this feeling is only amplified when you are behind the wheel of your car. Suddenly, the loose, even motion of the wheels turning over the pavement and the gentle hum of your engine seem to be lulling you to sleep.
Driving while tired and when you are by yourself is often a deadly combination. When I was in high school, the track coach was involved in a serious motor vehicle accident when she left a friend's house late at night, fell asleep at the wheel and crashed her car into a guardrail on the highway. It could have been a lot worse. She could have been driving down a residential street, and that guardrail could have been a small child or someone's house. Never underestimate how tired you think you are or how tired you think you are going to be in X amount of hours from now. If you feel any sort of tiredness whatsoever and you know that you have a long drive planned out, plan, instead, to call up whoever you were supposed to meet to let them know that you will be late.
It is much better to make sure that you get ample rest because when you don't, it can put you in a sleep deprived state that is usually characterized by moodiness, irritability, loss of focus, memory loss and other characteristics. When I was a police officer, I can still remember pulling over one woman late at night. She was driving with her headlights off and was proceeding extra slowly, weaving in and out of her lane. Immediately, I thought that I was going to be dealing with a drunk driver, since these are the characteristics that are most often associated with drunk drivers. However, when I pulled her over and spoke to her, it turned out that she was incredibly sleep deprived. She had passed all of the drunk driving sobriety tests, but as it turned out, she had some sort of personal issue going on at home, and had not gotten any sleep over the past several days.
I then asked this woman if she knew of anyone who could come out and pick her up. When she said that she just lived a few minutes away, I radioed in to the station and told them that I was going to be transporting someone to their home. I had her wait outside of her car while I parked it in a safe place in a public parking lot and then drove her home. When she got home, she assured me that she would have someone drive her to get her car the next day.
