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posted by janrinok on Saturday June 28 2014, @08:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the excuse-for-researchers-to-play-with-driving-simulators dept.

Researchers from the University of Granada have shown that some of us are "morning-types" and others "'evening-types", as a function of the time of day when our biological and cognitive functions are more active. This has a marked influence on the individual's capacity to react when behind the driving wheel.

Evening-types drive worse during their "off time" - in the early morning - by comparison with their optimal time - during the evening. But, morning-types are more stable drivers, both in the morning and the evening.

In fact, evening-types are much worse drivers - they pay less attention - at their "non-optimal" time of day (early in the morning) by comparison with their optimal time (during the evening). However, in this experiment morning-types were more stable drivers than evening-types and drove relatively well both in the morning and the evening

The University of Granada researchers [also] warn that driving after more than 18 hours wakefulness e.g. at 2.00 in the early morning after waking at 8.00 the previous morning, which is quite common, "entails the same level of risk as driving with the legal maximum level of blood alcohol, because our level of vigilance declines considerably".

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  • (Score: 2, Funny) by Buck Feta on Saturday June 28 2014, @08:59PM

    by Buck Feta (958) on Saturday June 28 2014, @08:59PM (#61403) Journal

    A bunch a damn crickets chirping don't affect *MY* drivin' ability.

    --
    - fractious political commentary goes here -
    • (Score: 2) by Geotti on Saturday June 28 2014, @10:36PM

      by Geotti (1146) on Saturday June 28 2014, @10:36PM (#61421) Journal

      +1.

      I drive perfectly well in the morning, after not having slept at night. Insensitive Clods!

  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 28 2014, @09:21PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 28 2014, @09:21PM (#61407)

    Evening-types make more typing mistakes in the early morning. Somebody should do a study to prove it, and then get the results posted to all the news sites, like a good little attention whore.

    • (Score: 2) by skullz on Sunday June 29 2014, @12:24AM

      by skullz (2532) on Sunday June 29 2014, @12:24AM (#61458)

      Nono you have to blog about it with anecdotal evidence gathered on your iPhone and then make up some first world life hack! That's what true attention whores do.

  • (Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday June 29 2014, @01:17AM

    by anubi (2828) on Sunday June 29 2014, @01:17AM (#61475) Journal
    I am a night person. I do not know why, and I would change it, however attempts to do so seem to turn me into a mindless moron zombie. I can get the physical system going, but mentally, I will run about five cans short of a six pack, and the remaining can isn't even fresh.

    However, just the time I get to going good, a lot of others are ready to call it a day.

    I do concede the morning people seem to have an upper hand in the business world, as an 8AM hour seems to be a lot more valuable than a 8PM hour to the business world.

    For me, its 8PM when I finally start getting insights as to how to properly design my stuff, where it becomes obvious to me where I have substantial overdesign and can make significant simplification and cost reductions without affecting ( and often improving ) resilience.

    I remember well trying to arrange things so I could be at my desk at 7:30 AM. I would get there, physically, but looking back on it, its a fluke of statistics I did not run someone over on the way. Mentally, I evaluate myself as worse than a six pack down at one sitting.

    I have had a six-pack experience so I can relate to it.

    I do not know why; I do know its "all in the mind", but so far I seem to be incapable of rewriting my OS. Seems like a leopard trying to rearrange his spots. I bore people to no end with my endless techie talk. I can't get excited at all over sports. I could care less about fashion. I will spend countless hours over a design refining it until it is perfect. Then never build it.

    I get so damned excited over what I am building I can't shut down and go to sleep.

    Not quite the kind of thing one would want to see in a Corporate environment.
    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
    • (Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Sunday June 29 2014, @11:42AM

      by wantkitteh (3362) on Sunday June 29 2014, @11:42AM (#61594) Homepage Journal

      I am also a night person and can (anecdotally) relate that I own two motorbikes, originally purchased for commuting into work, and don't feel safe enough on either at 7:30am to have ever actually used them for that purpose. Unfortunately, all the biker types I know are the most despicable types of morning people and are always bugging me to come out riding with them at stupid o'clock on a Sunday morning when the roads are quiet. They haven't figured out that I have just as much fun without them at stupid o'clock on Saturday night when they're all tucked up in bed and the roads are just as quiet.

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Noldir on Sunday June 29 2014, @10:40AM

    by Noldir (1216) on Sunday June 29 2014, @10:40AM (#61581)
    The world is geared towards the morning--people types? I think they would fair pretty bad in these kind of tests if they were forced to get up 3 hours early every day for years. Irregardles of the time I go sleeping, everything before 9am is smack middle in my sleep cycle and I feel that for the rest of the day. Consequently 6pm is not the end of the day for me but more like a 3/4 there. That's also a bit of a flaw in this study, I see no comparison between the two types from the viewpoint of the evening person. I wonder how the morning types would fair driving at 2 am..
  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday June 29 2014, @12:06PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Sunday June 29 2014, @12:06PM (#61603)

    Its the phase angle of the sleep signal vs some totally arbitrary clock signal. I'm not impressed. Astrology sounds more relevant, at least Venus could produce a "micro-tide" pulling more blood into my head.

    So take a "night dude" and fling him a couple timezones such that without any change in his rhythm he's now a morning dude and magically his driving will change. LOL for a couple days until he becomes a night dude again.

    I think a lot of it revolves around procrastination especially WRT sleep. Wanna wake up at 4 am like I do totally refreshed and ready to go? Just be asleep around 8 pm to 9 pm like I do, at least most days. As a white guy I don't have rhythm (oh bad joke) so some nights I stay up past midnight, although I pay for it the next day.

    You can usually tell who works outside and who works inside in these discussions based on artificial light. I work and live mostly inside so markings on a clock have nothing to do with my light level or sleep cycle, whereas its probably a very big deal for a lumberjack.