Prosecuted for driving while tired?

[echt]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/may/08/blood-test-for-sleepy-drivers-could-pave-way-for-prosecutions
and
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/may/08/experts-divided-on-ethics-of-testing-and-punishing-tired-drivers

This is at the research stage, but tests are being investigated that will pick up the blood markers showing that a person is too tired to drive.
What do you think of it? My immediate thought was of current drink/drug testing in Australia where drivers are pulled over routinely for testing at random.

Yes, my sibling was killed in a car accident less than a mile from home.

Yes it does because the employer choses where yo base their operations and need to remunerate staff accordingly so that they don't have to risk lives as a matter of routing

Work should work for us not the other way around

An employer needs to locate their business according to a lot of factors. Yes availability of a local appropriate workforce is one aspect, but there are other factors not the least being affordable premises. If the business needs plenty of space, the costs of buying/renting appropriate premises in somewhere like a town centre will be prohibitive, even if such a property can be found at all.

Business owners need to make a profit, and sometimes with a lower margin business they can only pay a certain amount for staff and premises. Otherwise they will go out of business and nobody gets paid.

You say work should work for us, but that's very much within the bounds of the needs of the individual business we are working for. Take my example in my post above about a bakery. This needs to be located where there's affordable space and good transport links for the goods in and out. Due to bread etc being goods that need to be sold very fresh, bakers need to start the process during the night so the bread can be sold fresh to sell the following morning - I'm talking nice bread here, not plastic mass produced sliced Hovis or Kingsmill type stuff. . I know of very few (if any) places in the South East for example where you can get sufficient affordable premises within walking distance of a qualified workforce.

It isn't an employers responsibility to arrange their business purely for the benefit of the staff.

I'm curious as to how the science would work.

Rather than just used as a means to punish people for driving when too tired, could this science be used to quickly identify people suffering from chronic exhaustion? Once you're chronically ill, it becomes your new baseline, and you don't know how tired you really are.

If testing could be rolled out with a wider application than solely for traffic cops, this could be a really positive thing.

Yes. A dangerous driver hit my child and the police said they didn't have resources to prosecute. Do that first.

I've had 3 children that have been terrible sleepers - I've been saying for years I don't think I can be safe behind the wheel sometimes due to how tired I am.

Exactly. They do have a choice, as @spookysnake says. Rest facilities must be provided, even if hot meals are no longer available to night staff. Iniquitous, imo
Trouble is tiredness itself impairs judgement

My 69 year old DM was killed in a car accident with her pensioner partner driving. He ploughed into oncoming traffic and also killed another woman and badly injured two others.
They were returning home from holiday. Tiredness was queried but he said he was well rested although he also said he couldn't remember anything of the accident so who knows?
Got away with a fine.

@Spookysnake yep, doctors and nurses can change jobs.
I mean they already do anyway (or move to Australia etc…)

But don’t come back crying if there is no one to then look after you or your family when you are ill….

The answer to that isn’t to tell them to use a taxi (have tu seen the reason fur the junior doctors strike??) but to review working conditions of those people!!
In particular because if they are nit fit enough to drive, they aren’t fit enough to take life and death decisions either.

This will predominantly affect women who we know take the brunt of childcare and other caring responsibilities while trying to hold down a job at the same time. If they're going to bring this in they'll need to dramatically increase the level of maternity and paternity leave so we're not having to commute to work until our kids are sleeping through the night! And they'll need to reconsider anyone who works nightshifts or long shifts or overly physical work. They'll also need to rule out anyone with a disability who experiences fatigue or trouble sleeping from driving. Like obviously it's common sense and there's times in the early days especially where my ds wasn't sleeping much at night where I knew myself not to drive because I didn't feel safe enough. But then campaign around that rather than criminalising people for it. How are employers expected to retain a reliable workforce if people who can't sleep or have young families or are up with someone sick in the night or noisy neighbours won't be able to make it into work the next day without fear of getting in trouble. Our rail and bus networks aren't well enough developed or consistent enough especially across rural areas for everyone to be able to take that on as a suitable alternative.

They don’t seem to be able to prosecute rapists or burglars so how will they find the time for this in amongst prosecuting hate speech against cross dressers who are now protected under Scottish hate crime legislation.

If they combine the introduction of this with also providing incentives and funding for -
> more cars to be designed with easy conversion to a fold-to-flat-bed seat configuration
> more affordable rest-stop options to get a bed for a few hours without doubling the cost of the journey
> employers forbidden from putting exhausting rota shift patterns onto anyone, and obliged to provide sleep facilities in the work place
> an entitlement to occasional unpaid "duvet days" if too tired to get to work...

Then I am all for it.

This opinion piece from the Guardian has popped up. The comments are interesting:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/09/obsession-sleep-harm-drivers-legal-sleep-limit

My own thoughts are that from a practical point of view, should the technology be developed, it'll be applied after an an RTA rather than random testing - how much time do the police have?

Just as a personal example of a small part of what is needed to help sleepy drivers, when driving back from Bendigo to Melbourne (152K and I'm always doing both ways) the roadside is peppered with signs to not drive while sleepy, etc. Is there a place to pull over? No there bloody isn't until you're in the outer suburbs of Melbs. Far too late. The road out to Bendigo has loads. I'm pretty sure the UK has similar situations.

“Tired drivers kill ten times more people than drunk drivers”

Isnt that because it has finally become antisocial to drink and drive?
if we all thought it was ok to have a drink or two and then drive home then maybe those numbers would reverse, or equal?

im not trying to start a fight, more a discussion as to what is more dangerous, being tired or being drunk

and if it’s the former, shouldn’t the way certain shift patterns operate be reviewed for the benefit of us all (after all, office workers on an early morning/late night run deserve not to be mown down by a chronically overworked and tired nurse/firefighter/police officer/doctor/etc etc)?

if it’s the latter then hopefully even fewer people will drink (and/or drug) & drive

That'll be great for shift workers, including of course the Police. Do you think they'll be arresting eachother?

shouldn’t the way certain shift patterns operate be reviewed for the benefit of us all

Problem is there are a significant number of jobs (and not just in the public and/or caring sector) that demand long and sometimes very fatiguing shifts and working patterns..there's often simply no way around it.

Really,what do you suggest they do after their shift or returning home at 3/4 am in the morning after being called out.....
Places like hospitals haven't got beds for patients never mind tired staff!

Anti-social hours, yes. Long shifts, I'd say not. Why have two twelve-hour shifts if you could have three eight-hours ones?

Totally agree with this, it’s why many people including myself have left the nhs. Long shifts may work for some but I found them exhausting and the hospitals refuse to let staff work traditional shifts.

There is definitely a way around long shifts… employing more people and making shifts shorter.

There really are occupations (most definitely some in some niche roles transport/transportation) where you simply can't break shifts up into neat 8 hour blocks..

Those professions have their own regulations about maximum working hours and mandatory breaks because they are safety-critical jobs. No one wants a tired pilot crashing a plane, nor a tired wagon driver crashing a lorry.

Oh I'm well aware of those sorts of regulations....they are there to keep things legit but it doesn't stop tiredness.

For infos sake for flying crew under EASA rules even without breaks a 12 plus hour working day is allowable and you can rinse and repeat the next day, though perhaps with a slight slip in starting time, for several days in a row.

In some circumstances you can stretch out to around 17 hours, on shift, with no break....and be back at work 17 hours or so later.

It would be hard to impossible to make flying, especially Long Haul, viable if doing such was not possible...and people want their holidays...

I mention the above only to highlight that the long shifts issue isn't restricted to the public sector or caring professions, and that regardless of the occupation there might not be an easy fix.

Now whether you should drive home after such shifts is another matter........(FWIW I didn't)

Yeah. I got 3 hours sleep last night. I feel totally fine this morning as that's just life with a newborn and a toddler. What happens when tiredness is just the baseline normal for someone? How do they self-assess their safety to drive? And as a PP posts, overnight care for children largely falls to women, so this would disproportionately affect women.

Yet another burden for the justice system (although the government loves fine income) and another way of killing off the NHS. The effects of tiredness must vary from individual to individual. I'd rather be driven by a competent but tired person than by a fresh but incompetent driver. Should not such tests be applied to all NHS doctors so they don't go on working beyond their tiredness capacity? Should our politicians be tested so they don't make foolish decisions when too tired? Come to think of it, I thought the new king looked a bit tired on Saturday. And then there are tired voters at the end of a working day putting their cross in the wrong box.