Amen! The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration conservatively [my emphasis] estimates that 100,000 police-reported crashes are the direct result of driver fatigue each year. This results in an estimated 1,550 deaths, 71,000 injuries, and $12.5 billion in monetary losses. These figures may be the tip of the iceberg, since currently it is difficult to attribute crashes to sleepiness.

(Scary) stats from DrowsyDriving.org:

• 60% of adult drivers – about 168 million people – say they have driven a vehicle while feeling drowsy in the past year, and more than one-third, (37% or 103 million people), have actually fallen asleep at the wheel!

• Men are more likely than women to drive while drowsy (56% vs. 45%) and are almost twice as likely as women to fall asleep while driving (22% vs. 12%).

• People who sleep six to seven hours a night are twice as likely to be involved in such a crash as those sleeping 8 hours or more, while people sleeping less than 5 hours increased their risk four to five times.

• A study...in Australia showed that being awake for 18 hours produced an impairment equal to a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of .05, and .10 after 24 hours; .08 is considered legally drunk.

• This will wake you up: Several drowsy driving incidents have resulted in jail sentences for the driver. Multi-million dollar settlements have been awarded to families of crash victims as a result of lawsuits filed against individuals as well as businesses whose employees were involved in drowsy driving crashes.

Their suggested countermeasures. My personal "countermeasure" — a wife who talks incessantly, especially if she thinks I'm getting drowsy while driving

Here's a commercial "gadget," the Driver Alert Master, although I'd rather practice prevention and not rely on something that kicks in after I've nodded off. Better than nothing maybe, but a) what if you don't activate it, and b) there's the danger of "over-correcting" after being startled awake.