The Issues - Tiredness

We are living and working in a society that seems to forego sleep: banking, online shopping, supermarkets, petrol stations - most activities can be conducted around the clock, seven days a week.

Our 24-hour lifestyle has many benefits, but it also means many of us are working unusual hours and have less time available for sleep. In addition, few of us appreciate just how important sleep is to ensure a healthy life.

Tiredness impacts on our general wellbeing: it impairs performance; promotes mistakes and accidents; leads to ineffective communication and poor decision making.

Tiredness is thought to have contributed to some of the worst industrial disasters of the 20th Century including Chernobyl, Bhopal and the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

The UK Department for Transport finds that least 10% of accidents on UK roads are due to tiredness; an amount that can be doubled (20%) for motorways and other monotonous roads.  Fall-asleep crashes are much more likely to result in death or serious injury, owing to the higher speed at impact.  About half of these crashes are work-related. Sadly, about 10 people a week die on our roads as a result of driver tiredness.