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I had a twenty-year old working for me. Commuting to the site I passed him on the freeway, slowed down to wave, etc. He was just zoned, staring ahead. Then he passed me - no acknowledgement. I was going to give him the same lecture I give my kids - you can’t just stare ahead.

He ended up in front of me on the two lane road to the site. I come up to a bunch of bales of hay in the highway - traffic flaggers all over the place. I figured a truck had dumped a load of hay at the construction site.

Nope - there was my worker’s car. Covered in long grass where he went off the road, hay from where he went through the edge of the construction site, and he was parked at the side of the road. Thank God the workers were still in their safety meeting - he broke the flagger’s stick in half where it had been at the flagger’s station!

He had fallen asleep. It was then I realized he was working my job (6am to 7 pm with travel) then going directly to the fast food joint until Midnight!

I hope he learned his lesson.

Prayers for this stupid kid too, and all of those that he killed and their families.

Another time as a 20 year old, I was trying to make the New England to Florida run in one drive after not enough sleep, I was weaving in my lane down in Virginia, and I stopped to get a cup of coffee, and as I was walking in at a truck stop, a trucker said “Are you driving that little yellow sports car? If you are, you should get some coffee or pull off for a while.” It was good advice, but I was too young and stupid to hear it.

Well, the coffee didn’t help. I got back on the highway, and just a few miles down the road again, I was starting to nod.

I was in the left hand lane of I95, and I saw headlights coming at me, and that woke me up really quickly. I realized it wasn’t coming at me, it was a car upside down on its roof in the left lane, and the headlights were pointing into traffic.

I pulled over, and ran across the highway, fully thinking there was going to be something terrible I was going to see, some mangled person. When I reached the car, before I could bend over, a bare forearm and hand came out of the crushed down window, then another, and before I could even get over being completely startled, a guy with long hair wearing only blue jeans and no shirt or shoes dragged himself out and stood up next to me as I stared at him. (I have no memory of anything else at that time, cars that might have been zooming by, but the look of this wild eyed guy) I finally managed to blurt out “Are you okay?” and he said “Yeah...I think so.”

When I asked what happened, he said he had fallen asleep.

After that, I had no trouble staying awake for a while. But as the sun was coming up, I was driving through Georgia, and was nodding off. This time, I pulled my MG off the road, put my seat back, and leaned back to take a nap.

I awoke in a terrified panic, reaching for the wheel. It was a sunny morning, I had barely fallen asleep, and as I blinked in the beautiful sunshine, I realized I had pulled off the road.

I had dropped immediately into sleep and dreamed I was still driving down the road and fallen asleep at the wheel. My heart was pounding, and I broke out in a sweat. Needless to say, I made it the rest of the way down.

I don’t do that anymore.