Taking a nap, even a short nap in your vehicle, is much more effective than a simple break to avoid, during a long journey, the inevitable drowsiness after lunch, according to a clinical study published this Saturday this weekend. end of vacation departures. Forty "good sleepers" (at least 8 hours of sleep the night before) carried out on a driving simulator and with electrodes measuring several cognitive variables (fatigue, drowsiness, alertness, anxiety), a monotonous motorway journey (without traffic, with no driving leave their way).
This trip was sequenced in two times two hours of driving, interspersed with an hour of break including an identical lunch for each participant. During this break, a first group took a nap in a bed after the snack, a second slept on the reclined seat of the vehicle and the last just a simple break.
Result: during the two hours following the stop, the lateral deviations of the vehicle (zigzags synonymous with loss of alertness or even drowsiness) of the subjects who did not sleep are 21% higher than those of those who took a nap - the difference is much less between subjects who slept in a bed and on the seat. The delta is even + 80% between the 40th and 50th minutes following the return to the steering wheel. “Behind all this there is the central clock, which controls a hypovigilance phase (intermediate state between waking and sleeping, during which the faculties of analysis and observation are reduced) in the early afternoon , to allow you to sleep if you want, ”Damien Davenne told AFP.
"The nap is essential when you make a long journey"
Chronobiologist, university professor and director of the COMETE research unit at Inserm / Unicaen, dedicated to mobility, he piloted this study funded by the Vinci Autoroutes foundation. Impossible to fight against this hypovigilance at the beginning of the afternoon, "automatic, even if it is accentuated by previous sleep deprivation", he adds. “The nap is essential when making a long trip. Ten or fifteen minutes are enough, then come into play mechanisms of sleep inertia (waking up still asleep) detrimental to driving, ”he continues.
According to the 2020 barometer of the Vinci Autoroutes foundation, 62% of French people polled by Ipsos say they stop, during a long journey, to take a nap.
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