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Multiple Choice

Which statement about fatigue and driving safety is most accurate?

Fatigue reduces driving safety because when you’re tired, your brain processes information more slowly, your judgment of distances and speeds is less reliable, and your reactions to hazards are delayed. This combination makes it easier to miss signs, misjudge gaps, or react too late, which raises the chance of a crash. Fatigue can cause micro-sleeps—brief episodes of sleep you might not notice—that can occur even while you’re trying to stay awake behind the wheel. Caffeine helps you feel more awake for a while, but it doesn’t remove the underlying impairment to thinking and reaction time. Fatigue can affect you at any time, not just at night, especially on long, monotonous drives. The other ideas—that fatigue is beneficial on long trips, or that caffeine completely eliminates fatigue, or that fatigue only matters at night—are inaccurate.

Fatigue reduces driving safety because when you’re tired, your brain processes information more slowly, your judgment of distances and speeds is less reliable, and your reactions to hazards are delayed. This combination makes it easier to miss signs, misjudge gaps, or react too late, which raises the chance of a crash. Fatigue can cause micro-sleeps—brief episodes of sleep you might not notice—that can occur even while you’re trying to stay awake behind the wheel. Caffeine helps you feel more awake for a while, but it doesn’t remove the underlying impairment to thinking and reaction time. Fatigue can affect you at any time, not just at night, especially on long, monotonous drives. The other ideas—that fatigue is beneficial on long trips, or that caffeine completely eliminates fatigue, or that fatigue only matters at night—are inaccurate.