Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • Thanks to monday.com for sponsoring this episode.

  • monday.com is a team management tool that helps you manage deadlines, connect people, and boost collaboration.

  • ♪♪♪

  • If you've ever been on a long road trip, you may have gotten an hour or so in only to notice you're feeling kinda... relaxed.

  • Tired, even.

  • That's not just a problem for getting to your destination on time.

  • According to the UK's Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, driver fatigue

  • may contribute to around 20 percent of road accidents.

  • Of course, not catching all the right Z's the night before is one thing, but nodding

  • off in cars seems to happen even if you're healthy and rested.

  • In other words, a lot of us are prone to this effect.

  • And we actually don't totally understand why.

  • One idea is that white noise makes us sleepy.

  • In this case, the low drone of tires passing over the road.

  • And there have been a few small studies to test that idea.

  • For example, in a 2015 study, nineteen participants were asked to drive on simulated roads both quiet and loud.

  • And when they drove on the loud road, they showed more signs of fatiguelike driving more slowly or accidentally crossing lanes.

  • But there are a few snags.

  • For one thing, people didn't actually say they felt more tired, so it's really hard to tell whether noise was really the causal factor.

  • Instead it might be the vibration of the car, rather than the road noise, that makes us drowsy.

  • That's the conclusion of a 2018 study where fifteen participants sat in a driving simulator that had been rigged up to a vibration table.

  • Participants were asked todrivefor an hour at high speed while the platform either vibrated four to seven times per second, or was still.

  • They rated how sleepy they felt before and after driving, and the researchers monitored their heart rate as a measure of drowsiness.

  • After pretend driving for an hour, those who had been vibrating said they felt really sleepy,

  • whereas those who got the smooth ride didn't.

  • And it didn't even take that full hour for those in the vibrating group to start showing signs of fatigue.

  • After just fifteen minutes of driving, those participants' heart rate patterns indicated they were drowsy.

  • Now I'm thinking that we need somebody to shake my bed!

  • What the researchers think was happening was that the vibration was activating drivers' parasympathetic nervous system

  • which, generally speaking, slows and relaxes the body.

  • What's kind of strange was that the heart rate pattern researchers saw was actually

  • a sign of sympathetic nervous system activation.

  • Which, again broadly speaking, does the opposite.

  • It's responsible for the fight or flight response, for example.

  • The researchers concluded that this sympathetic activation was a sign of the body trying to compensate for the drowsiness brought on by the vibration.

  • In other words, the vibration is making a person sleepy, making it harder for them to drive,

  • so the sympathetic system kicks in to help them concentrate, which shows up in the form of changes to their heart rate.

  • Maybe cars of the future will have some extra shock absorption to minimize all that jigglin' so I won't be so sleepy.

  • But until then, at least you know to look out for rough roads if you want to avoid carcolepsy.

  • Also, if you're feeling sleepy at all, gopull off, get some Wendy's or something.

  • Don't take the risk.

  • There are way more people behind the scenes here at SciShow than you normally see on the screen.

  • From writers and editors to hosts and producers, it takes a whole team to make these videos.

  • And it takes good tools to keep a team like this one running smoothly.

  • That's where things like Monday.com can come in.

  • Monday.com is a team management tool that works for teams of any size, from two freelancers working together to worldwide collaborations.

  • Its visual layout is digestible and easy to use, and can replace bulkier, more burdensome spreadsheets and whiteboards.

  • And you can even toggle between multiple layouts to find one that works best for you.

  • From general goals to day-to-day specifics, monday.com can help coordinate it all.

  • Check out the link in the description to learn more.

  • ♪♪♪

Thanks to monday.com for sponsoring this episode.

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it