this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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My wife thinks I’m insane, but my whole family is built where we would drive 10+ hours (710miles~) a couple times a year with only 1 stop at mile like 500 for fuel and a snack. Otherwise we’d just keep going. Some people don’t need a break for a LOOOONNNNGGGG time when driving. Of my friend group (20th people) on road trips only 2/3 need stops every so often. Even my wife has adjusted to my driving nature.
I'd be really interested to see the results of response time testing on drives that long. You might be highly anomalous but most people begin to suffer significant attention and reaction penalties after around an hour that get steadily worse.
I know that when I try do multitask testing (a significant part of driving) after 2 hours of continuous driving my results are like 50% of freshly rested. I'd be surprised if you were anywhere capable of navigating an emergency reliably after 4 hours.
🤔 most of us in my family LOVE driving. Usually when we even needed to think/decompress or just have fun we would hop in a car and just drive. So I’m definitely more in a minority on that front. I suspect we’re just “drivers” compared to others. I just think more people can go more than 250 miles without stopping. It probably also helps that 3 of 4 of us have some level of adhd (medical diag). I think for us driving gives our monkey brain something to do. Like meditation, but worse for the environment. 😅
You really should try testing yourself though. You might be endangering your own and other people's lives.
Try some stuff like memory, attention, and dual n back before and after (make sure to train for a bit and discard those results to avoid training effects)
I can assure you whatever test you want I could pass with flying colors and beyond, and so could most most drivers. That said, my car also drives itself on the highway for the most part and gives me a massage while I’m driving. So I sort of have an additional cheat code for driving. Even still my previous car for daily use was a manual Evo X and I took that all over the PNW and drove it fine for hours on end. Driving is taxing, but most people can usually go about 4-6 hours of constant driving, especially if you have someone in the car to talk with.
talking while driving is actually quite bad:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0018720817748145
That would explain all the people I’ve definitely hit on the road.
Don't be an arse that isn't how risk works. You can claim you perform perfectly well driving for a long time with distractions but evidence suggests it has a significant cost.
you might be a freak, some people are there are people who can calculate primes in their head or recall with near perfect accuracy, but the odds are stacked against you.
Unless you've actually tested yourself you should probably proceed under the assumption that driving for more than a couple of hours without a break begins to get dangerously risky. Middle of a salt flat in woop woop? who cares. Elsewhere? Maybe pull over and spend 3 minutes doing jumping jacks or something.
Their comments jump all over the place. Their partner hates it, they have a self-driving car etc. Completely rationalising driving tired and proud of it. Worst kind of driver.
I'm willing to believe some people are vastly superior drivers to me, I'm also willing to believe I'm more cautious than ethics demands.
Even so, suppose you are the greatest driver to ever exist. If after 4 hours on the road you're at 70% of your skill, even if that skill is still really high, isn't it worth a 10 minute break to get back to like 90%?
It's not like taking a break is terribly unpleasant. Unless the weather is dreadful just have a cup of tea from a thermos and a stretch then hop back on the road.
My wife doesn’t hate it; just took a while to adjust to it. I don’t rationalize being tired and driving because I don’t do it. When I’ve been actually tired from driving I pull over at a rest stop and stretch or sleep. It’s ok though, I’m sure my 15 years of perfect driving (about 20k miles a year) without even being pulled over or ticketed means I’m a shitty driver. 👉(👁 ͜ʖ👁)👉
Evidence suggests lots of things. There’s always outliers and people who have different skill sets for different things. That doesn’t invalidate the data and certainly I agree that many people are shitty at driving. The original comment was about people only going 250 miles and needing to rest, which I don’t find true. I drove the salt flats. As I got tired my wife and switched driving since the scenery was so… flat. Usually the mountainous driving I do keeps me awake since I need to be actively paying attention or I’d die.
This isn't really about skill though. It's about mental exhaustion and what that means when it comes to safety.
Skill is having a larger capacity until mental/physical exhaustion. If someone runs every day they’re a skilled runner. Their capacity to run is greater than mine because they aren’t as quick to become exhausted. The same is true for the brain.
Maybe, but I just feel that a skilled driver would be smart enough to know that it isn't safe to drive for too long.
And don't forget the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Correct, however a driver with more skill also has more capacity for driving longer. I don’t think 250 miles (the original point of this whole thread) is long. 750 miles on the other hand… is. I could easily drive 750 miles with no problem. Get to my location, party for several hours and then finally sleep. I know this because I do it about once a year with family. Most people might not be able to go that long. Because they’re not a “skilled driver.” They haven’t built up capacity to understand. Even friends and family of mine when they drive aren’t doing the same things I’m doing. Listening to the car, hearing the inputs and feeling the inputs, monitoring grip levels, ensuring adequate room between other vehicles to ensure accidents can’t happen due to proximity. There’s ways to also lessen mental exhaustion as I mentioned. My car keeping me in the lane and keeping speed automatically for me. Camera systems to watch out for people and other cars with collision avoidance, not to mention another passenger as a set of eyes. A skilled driver would also know where there limit is. I found mine to be around mile 850~ I know this because as I was driving across country rushing back home at night that I didn’t feel I was performing at the level I needed to in order to safely operate a vehicle. No one else on the road for miles, but I switched drivers with my wife who I made nap as I knew I couldn’t do the whole 1000 miles needed in one go. That’s also the difference in skill. Knowing you’ll need assistance and making sure it’s in place when you do. Like having a hotel booked at 700 miles (or whatever mile marker a driver can safely drive) or making other stops as needed.
I’d be interested to see a study on it, but I’d wager that Americans and Canadians can drive for longer than their European/Asian counterparts. Just due to the “training” we have of driving longer distances more frequently.
https://casr.adelaide.edu.au/casrpubfile/2951/CASR197.pdf australia is even more spread out than the USA or candada, being the same size and having vastly lower population density.
This study finds that
further
literally 1 in 10 fatal crashes involved fatigue, and 4/10 fatigue crashes involve long distance driving. Maybe just take a break, 10 minutes isn't worth your life. It's not an issue of how tough or manly you are, how bulbous and engorged your testes are, or whatever other issue of ego you're having. You are an animal, you get tired.
It's not really about how much you like driving
Yeah I can do 10 hour drives also. My partner needs to use the restroom every 30 minutes. If they've had any amount of water, it's every 15 minutes.
The first road trip my wife and I did when we were dating I was like 45 into the drive and she said “I have to pee” right after she had gone at the house. It set me up for a trip where I was stopping about once every 2ish hours or so. She was drinking a ton of water and didn’t realize she should pace herself.
Hey it's me!
It sucks.
inb4: Yeah, been to doctors, had tests done, had scans done, blahblah, apparently there isn't anything wrong I'm just cursed with...if I drink something I will have to pee like 66.67% of that amount back out relatively soon.
It sucks for drives. It sucks for flights. It sucks for movies at movie theaters. It sucks for plays. I typically just go on the verge of dehydrated so I don't have to pee at all.
I'm sorry. I know it's quite a burden.