Reporter Ursula Hudson went for a drive as part of the Derby Telegraph’s road safety awareness campaign Think First and realised how long boring journeys can make you sleepy in just minutes. She tried out a car simulator at the Sleep Research Centre at Loughborough to see how driving can be affected by fatigue.

The thought of tackling a long drive is always tiring. On a motorway, the scenery is always the same and the sound of the car rumbling away is monotonous.

For thousands of drivers who travel on the same roads every day, their concentration lapses and they become tired.

After a day at work I decided to see how long it would take in the car simulator before I started to nod off.

Sitting in the simulator I started to drive, at first it was a novelty but, after about 10 minutes, I started rubbing my eyes and yawning.

Driving along a flat straight road with nothing to see and no one to talk to, I became bored and restless and decided to stop after only 15 minutes.

In reality, the longer I sat, I became less alert and switched to auto-pilot so, had there been any obstacles, I would have been unable to react quickly.

This small experience is only a fraction of what more than 100 students have volunteered to take part in to illustrate the effects of sleepiness on driving.

Professor Jim Horne, who runs the centre, said that people who have a disturbed night’s sleep feel most tired in the afternoon.

He said that students who had taken the test did so in controlled conditions, many after only five hours of sleep the night before.

Then they were asked to drive in the simulator for two hours and their reactions were tested.

In many cases, driving in those circumstances starts to become impaired after just one hour.

And, in some cases the volunteers even started to nod off, proving that, if you drive when you are tired, you risk killing yourself and other people.

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