Force To Drive While Being Tired?

I just watch that and i could not believe it that the news would put that on. In your guys best opinion what are some of the ways to keep yourself up while driving for so long? I hear that if you stare at the road that it could hypnotizer you if so is this true?

It's called getting tunnel vision and yes, it's real. I was driving my car out of Portland, Oregon. I'd had 3 hours of sleep the night before, drove 2 hours to Portland and was working on the 2 hour drive home in the dark after spending all day in the city. I'd barely left Portland when I was looking ahead at the road and wondering to myself why all the traffic had stopped. The traffic hadn't stopped, I had. I was so tired and so mesmerized by the taillights and my headlight reflection that I'd completely stopped multitasking and keeping my foot on the pedal. I pulled into a rest stop that was a minute away, settled between two trucks, and napped for an hour just to make it home.

Here's how to make sure you stay awake, get good sleep.

On top of that, eat healthy, don't drink soda or energy drinks or anything with a lot of sugar especially if you're already overweight. Your insulin response is slower when you're overweight so your body releases more insulin than it needs to deal with sugar and you end up with a major sugar crash.

Do a regular workout. It could just be a ten minute walk. Get out of your truck on your breaks or when loading/unloading and stretch. This will work towards helping you sleep better and feel better overall.

Play music, sing along, listen to interesting talk shows.

Really, you're not driving that long in the scheme of things. You have plenty of time to take care of your body and making sure you get adequate sleep. That doesn't mean you'll always be perfectly rested every time you start driving but, taking care of yourself will help you a million times more than caffeine, sugar, and pills.

I've done the graveyard shift for over 3.5 years and I've got sleeping and staying awake down to a science.

Here's a second one for your reading pleasure!

Truck driver no more!

Hahaha this guy ran the oil fields where I was for awhile. All I could think was if he was complaining about being tired before.. can't imagine he will be here for to long. Well.. he wasn't after about a month he said the company fired him because of his youtube video where some news lady came and interviewed him. Just more excuses from him really. He is just one of those guys where nothing is his fault. Last I saw he was back with some OTR company wanting to lease and or buy his own truck. All I could do is laugh. He is a fool.

This guy couldn't even stick to His promise to stay out of trucking! I guess he wasn't making enough money as an "ASE certified mechanic" to pay his mom rent for the basement.

No wonder - I mean, I've run into a few lazy mechanics over the years, but who would keep this guy on? "What!? You're going to force me to stay late to finish this oil change for this customer!? I'm tired! What if I forget to put the drain pan plug back in because I've had to work more than 8 hours in a day with only a 30 minute break for lunch? You're endangering the American public by your evil actions! So what it took me two hours to finish something that you say takes 20 minutes! You can't fire me - I quit!!! Hey! Give me back my camera!!!"

I hadn't seen that video before. That is just sad. Abe stands there at the end with his arms folded like he has something to be proud of or like he took a stand against the "bad people" in this industry. What a complete farce. He's no trucker. He simply doesn't have what it takes.

Ya know what this reminds me of? The little kid who steals cookies before dinner, gets caught in the act by his dad, gets yelled at for it, and then wipes the crumbs off his mouth before he goes running to mom crying for sympathy the moment she walks in the door. Mom has no idea what's really going on. All she knows is her baby is crying and she missed him all day and dad is apparently mean. So mom gives the kid another cookie (unknowingly) and holds him and wipes away the tears. She never sees the kid looking slyly over at dad while eating another cookie like, "Ha ha! I got you in trouble now and I'm getting another cookie!"

That's exactly what this is. Abe is just plain lazy and didn't want to run. He had a better plan than working hard for his money. He knew what would happen if he kept refusing to do his job and he set his company up to look back. What they don't explain anywhere is that he was working for a company that gave you a guaranteed minimum salary every week whether you ran the minimum amount of miles or not. So he was trying to run as little as possible and still get that guaranteed paycheck. The dispatcher told him he wasn't going to get his guaranteed pay and that's what the dispatcher is referring to when he says, "You know what happened to your paycheck this week."

So that's the real story. He wanted that big paycheck for doing nothing so he figured he'd get out of driving by telling the company he was too tired. They knew exactly what he was up to and he knew they would try to talk him into driving because he had no reason to be tired. If they didn't pay him his guaranteed salary he would blackmail them with this video.

Abe is an embarrassment to all of the proud, hard working, true professional drivers out there who take on the difficulties and dangers of this job and give it everything they have every day. He's no hero. He's the little kid that stole the cookies and then set his dad up to take the fall. Nothing more.

And of course he goes out of his way to make our entire industry look bad. Now everyone in America can once again look skeptically at every truck they pass wondering if they're being forced to drive when they're too tired.

Abe did all of that just for Abe, at the expense of his company and this entire industry, just so he could get paid for doing nothing. If he would put 1/4 of the effort into actually doing work that he puts into getting out of doing work and making everyone else look bad he might become a real man someday. But we don't have to worry about that. Not from this guy.

Shameful