Night driving

I drive mostly at night. Some nights I see 3-4 trucks in ditches. Another one bites the dust. Some few get lucky, but most don't. The ditch or bank is too steep, they plow the nose into the ground. It's amazing what those kingpins can endure, I haven't seen a cab sheared off yet from the trailer continuing on over it. The cargo not so much. I've certainly seen the cargo tear through the walls of the trailers.

Every night I see drivers falling asleep at the wheel. They're easy to spot, they don't hold their lane, speed varies, miss exits, miss signs. Sometimes I follow them, sometimes simply because I'm afraid to try passing. I watch them go past one exit after another, truck stop after truck stop. I can't help but ask why.

I figure I can guess why. Perhaps they are new, don't recognize the signs. I figure more often it's because the load has to deliver ontime, what choice do they have. They likely could have left earlier, not wasted so much time along the way. I allow an extra hour driving at night specifically for sleep.

You have to sleep. You can have 14 hours of sleep, get on the road and find yourself struggling to stay awake 5 hours later. Why? I don't know, it's just a fact of driving at night. I can use atomic fireballs to get me 30 minutes to an hour on down the road, but longer than that I have to sleep.

When you sleep you need 45 minutes and that means losing an hour. 10 minutes to shutdown and get rolling, 5 to fall asleep and 45 to sleep. If you can get by with less then more power to you, but if you have to stop repeatedly try 45. It's always gotten through the end of the shift.

If you are uncertain hold of on that 30. When it comes to not enough time to sleep you burnt your 30 is a big reason why. Assuming you trip planned to arrive and hour early you can take that extra half hour to get an hour even without planning for an hour of sleep. If you actually plannef for that hour you're set. If you don't need it and you're going to be over an hour early kill that time at the end. This isn't day driving.