Alcohol is known to cause car accidents in Homestead and across the country, but many people do not realize how dangerous fatigue can be. Most of us brush off tiredness as a fact of life. After all, many of us lead busy lives and sometimes not getting enough sleep is just a problem.
However, many types of personal injury, including injuries caused by car accidents, are linked to fatigue. There are many ways a few nights of lost sleep can translate to serious injury:
- Fatigue can lead to pedestrian accidents. Tired pedestrians may fail to look both ways or may wander in front of a car.
- Tiredness can lead to poor supervision of children. Fatigue and overwhelm has been linked to children being left in hot cars or being left unsupervised at pools. It takes just a few seconds of inattention for a child to find themselves in serious danger.
- Fatigue can cause boating and water accidents. Boating when tired can be as risky as boating under the influence and can lead to boating accidents in Homestead or your community.
- Fatigue can slow response times. One of the reasons why lack of sleep can be so dangerous in many situations is because it slows your response times. According to some research studies, it can have the same impact on your response times as alcohol.
- Tiredness can impact steadiness. When you are fatigued, you can be less steady on your feet, and this can increase your risk of trip and fall and slip and fall accidents.
- Tiredness can result in micro-sleep. When your body requires sleep, it can fall asleep for short bursts of time, fractions of a second. Fatigue leading to microsleeps can cause you to fall asleep for even longer, too, putting you at serious risk in a variety of situations.
- Fatigue can cause workplace accidents. If you are too tired to focus properly or have slow response times due to lack of proper sleep, you can make errors on the job which can compromise your safety. If you work around hazardous materials or heavy machinery, especially, you may be at risk.
There are several ways to reduce the risk of fatigue-related injury. If you feel tired often, consider how much sleep you get. Most adults need seven to nine hours. If you consistently get sleep in this range but still feel tired, see your physician. You may have a medical condition which prevents you from feeling rested and which may put you at risk.
If someone else’s fatigue or recklessness has caused your injury, you may have legal options. Contact Flaxman Law Group at 1-866-352-9626 (1-866-FLAXMAN) to schedule a free, no obligation case review with a Homestead personal injury attorney. Flaxman Law Group has offices in Homestead, Miami, and Hollywood and we serve the entire South Florida area. Our legal team has more than six decades of combined legal experience, so you can rely on us for representation.