Prevalence of Self-Reported Drowsy Driving, United States: 2015
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Summary
This report by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety addresses the prevalence of self-reported drowsy driving in the United States, aiming to provide updated estimates following previous studies that indicated significant underreporting in police crash data. While drowsiness is a known contributor to traffic crashes, it has historically received less attention than drunk or distracted driving. The study seeks to quantify current behaviors among U.S. drivers to inform safety interventions. The researchers analyzed data from the AAA Foundation’s 2015 Traffic Safety Culture Index, a nationally representative survey of 2,545 licensed drivers aged 16 and older who had driven in the preceding 30 days. Conducted online between July and August 2015, the survey asked respondents about their frequency of driving while struggling to keep their eyes open, their lifetime and recent history of falling asleep or nodding off while driving, and their typical sleep duration. Data were weighted to account for sampling probabilities and non-response. The findings reveal that 43.2% of drivers reported having ever fallen asleep or nodded off while driving. More recently, 10.0% admitted to this behavior within the past year, 6.6% within the past six months, and 2.5% within the past month. Additionally, 31.5% of drivers reported driving while so sleepy they had difficulty keeping their eyes open in the last 30 days. Drivers aged 19–24 were the most likely to report recent incidents of falling asleep while driving, while those aged 25–39 were most likely to report doing so regularly. Men were significantly more likely than women to report both ever falling asleep while driving (51.1% vs. 35.5%) and doing so in the past year. Sleep deprivation was strongly correlated with drowsy driving; drivers who slept less than six hours per day three to five days a week were nearly three times more likely to have fallen asleep while driving in the past year compared to those who slept at least six hours daily. Furthermore, drivers who reported struggling to keep their eyes open were substantially more likely to report having fallen asleep at the wheel. The study concludes that drowsy driving remains a widespread issue, with prevalence rates consistent with prior national surveys. The authors note that true prevalence may be higher due to social desirability bias and drivers’ lack of awareness of microsleeps. Given that previous research estimates drowsiness contributes to thousands of fatal crashes annually, the report emphasizes the need for public education on warning signs and risk reduction, such as ensuring adequate sleep and scheduling breaks. It also calls for further research into the effectiveness of vehicle-based drowsiness detection technologies and interventions targeting employers and the medical community.
Key finding
In a nationally representative 2015 survey of 2,545 licensed drivers, 43.2% reported ever falling asleep or nodding off while driving, 31.5% drove while so sleepy they struggled to keep their eyes open in the past 30 days, and 10.0% reported nodding off within the past year.
Methodology
survey
Sample size: N=2,545 licensed drivers who drove in the past 30 days
Provenance
The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed. Discovered via bulk_ingest_aaa_foundation on 2026-05-23 (6 acquisition events logged).
| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | aaa_foundation | — | — | 2 | 2026-05-23 |
| archive | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-23 |
| extract | success | cached | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
| clean | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-01 |
| chunk | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-01 |
| embed | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-02 |
| enrich | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-23 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-23 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 19 | 2026-06-11 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.
Topics
Ranked by relevance to this paper. Hover a topic for its definition.
- drowsiness
- drowsiness detection algorithms
- sleep deprivation
- truck driver fatigue
- drowsy as impairment
- incidence prevalence
Information type
What kind of knowledge this paper contributes, grouped by family — independent of topic (what it is about) and method (how it was studied).
- Empirical Findings: observational prevalence, physiological data