No-Doz, The Driver's Friend.

[junbugging]

For me, your premise is incorrect, as on me caffeine doesn't mask tiredness. There is no tiredness - for hours after I actually arrive at the destination, there is no tiredness. I have to take alcohol to induce some tiredness.

If there's no tiredness, then presumably the caffeine is irrelevant. Nothing you're saying here is convincing me that you're a good judge of, well, pretty much anything.

Just stay away from my daughters on the road.

 

[Renato1]

Quite simple - this thread is about to break to about 100 posts, with a significant weight of evidence - credible evidence - to show that your viewpoint is prima facie irresponsible. And your lack of recognition of any sort let alone the inability to comprehend that irresponsibility is absolutely mindboggling, even when weighed up against any sort of credible argument you have proffered to support your stance.

By that time, it is nearly a waste of time to pursue any further attempt to convince you.

In addition to that, the words I would like to express to you would see me banned from AFF. I did weigh up whether that consequence would be a small concession in view of expressing my absolute contempt for your irresponsible viewpoint, however I thought better of it.

I will add that (a) why is this topic in Open Discussions rather than Playground, and (b) this topic I will foresee would most likely be - for better or worse - closed/locked by the moderators in the very near future.

For anyone (especially guests) who is reading this thread, please think of your health and safety first and do not take a chance on your capabilities. The advice of the original poster should not be taken as definitive nor exemplary.

Truly fascinating. I point out that you make totally unsupported assertions and unsupported conclusions, and you respond with the statement that there is a significant weight of credible evidence that my view is irresponsible - and then don't say what that evidence is. In fact, you have thus just made another unsupported assertion - you know, when you say something off the top of your head, without anything to support it.

My position is that travellers doing long distance drives overseas as I did, may be wise to consider investing $5 in a packet of No-Doz to ensure their maximum safety, and safety of others.

Princess Fiona kindly linked to an article, which in turn analysed an Australian Case Study of truck drivers, where the Case Study in effect suggests the same thing I did.

Your position is that I am utterly irresponsible, presumably because being wide awake and alert while driving long distances is a very bad thing, for reasons that remain unspecified .

I think we'll have to leave it at that.
Regards,
Renato

Point taken about being able to drive around.

The way I would plan it is train/bus/fly from Switzerland to Brussels to Amsterdam and hire a car in each place to drive around. Sure it might cost a few dollars more than hiring one car for the whole trip but this is just a few dollars compared to what one would spend on the whole trip right?

John - believe me, the last place you want to drive around in is Amsterdam.
What you say is partly feasible, but you miss out on a few things. For example, driving through a 17km tunnel from the Italian side of Switzerland to Luzern. Then driving around the beautiful toll ways to Zurich, Bern and Biel as we did. Then driving down the ugly, lousy, dirty freeways in France - till one comes to the French toll road, and suddenly the former freeway becomes an immaculate road to drive on. Coming to Brussels when some one famous was getting married and having a hell of a time finding a car park etc etc.

We just like driving, given its flexibility, and have never used the trains except locally to go into Venice. Also, one is more vulnerable on trains to thieves.

My biggest problem with driving now is that Hertz and pretty much most everyone else won't allow you to drive into most former eastern Bloc European countries (exceptions are Slovenia and Croatia). Which means that I have to fly into them. So we went to Budapest last year with Ryan Air, as the train trip was very long, and the Trip Advisor reviews of that train trip were not good ones.
Regards,
Renato

 

[Skyring]

I spent five years as a night cabbie, driving twelve hour and occasionally longer shifts on a daily basis. Fatigue management was part of my life. Caffeine is all very well, but I needed to stay alert and focussed, not just for the driving but needing to keep an eye on the passengers when I had them and the despatch system when I didn't.

I found that when I began to get tired, I'd start to make small errors in navigation or giving change, and that if I kept going, the errors would get bigger. I didn't dare make any major mistakes with so many kangaroos and idiot/drunk drivers around, so whenever I began to feel weary, I'd find a little patch of darkness - a park, or a corner of a carpark or a lane or something, Canberra's full of 'em - crank back the seat and zonk off. No alarm, I'd just sleep as long as I could. Even five minutes of sleep would make a difference. Real sleep, that is, brain turned off.

Bugger the drugs, I say. Emergency use only. They don't make up for being fully awake.

Sure, they may give the feeling of being awake, but perceptions are altered too.

As others have said, it only takes one mistake.

There's a joke I used to tell before I became a cabbie. When I go, I'd say, I want to pass away peacefully and quietly in my sleep. Like my grandfather. Not screaming in terror like his passengers.

 

[Renato1]

If there's no tiredness, then presumably the caffeine is irrelevant. Nothing you're saying here is convincing me that you're a good judge of, well, pretty much anything.

Just stay away from my daughters on the road.

The discussion was the claim that caffeine masks tiredness, I respond that on me caffeine doesn't mask tiredness, and that it in fact makes me the opposite of tired.
And you say that if I am not tired from having used caffeine, then caffeine is irrelevant.
Presumably you are writing this very late at night and you are tired - since what you have written plainly does not follow.
Regards,
Renato

I think you will find if you research further that this has later been disproven.

Microsleeps don't wave flags they just happen. The time line you are discussing puts you in the fatigue area where they occur.

My parallel is valid as it is talking about healthy, fit individuals (military pilots) in controlled situations in a decompression chamber. They know exactly what is occurring and how and the best proof of this is to do it to only a percentage of the group at a time whilst the others watch. For what it's worth I can say been there done that to these specific and quite a few other similar type tests.

Hi Bill,
In your parallel you have healthy individuals being deprived of oxygen to the point of being unconcious - and they don't know it.
And while being deprived of oxygen they write stuff they think makes sense, but it turns out to be gibberish.
In both cases, while they may have known what was going to happen to them, they didn't know when it did actually happen to them. They didn't know at the actual time that they were going from bad to worse.

Are you saying that in my caffeinated state i may have thought I was doing a good job of driving, but that I was deluding myself like your oxygen deprivation crew was doing to themselves?

You forget - I had an independent objective observer sitting next to me, who's life was dependent on my safe driving. She won't ever drive in Italy, and on those long drives in Italy and USA she far preferred me driving with No-Doz, than me driving without it.
Regards,
Renato

I spent five years as a night cabbie, driving twelve hour and occasionally longer shifts on a daily basis. Fatigue management was part of my life. Caffeine is all very well, but I needed to stay alert and focussed, not just for the driving but needing to keep an eye on the passengers when I had them and the despatch system when I didn't.

I found that when I began to get tired, I'd start to make small errors in navigation or giving change, and that if I kept going, the errors would get bigger. I didn't dare make any major mistakes with so many kangaroos and idiot/drunk drivers around, so whenever I began to feel weary, I'd find a little patch of darkness - a park, or a corner of a carpark or a lane or something, Canberra's full of 'em - crank back the seat and zonk off. No alarm, I'd just sleep as long as I could. Even five minutes of sleep would make a difference. Real sleep, that is, brain turned off.

Bugger the drugs, I say. Emergency use only. They don't make up for being fully awake.

Sure, they may give the feeling of being awake, but perceptions are altered too.

As others have said, it only takes one mistake.

There's a joke I used to tell before I became a cabbie. When I go, I'd say, I want to pass away peacefully and quietly in my sleep. Like my grandfather. Not screaming in terror like his passengers.

You assert that caffeine gives one the feeling of being awake, and that perceptions are altered too.
Any evidence for this?

While your tips for taking naps is great for when driving around where you live, how is that practical for someone like me who has never been able to take such naps?

For someone like yourself who can take naps, when in my circumstances of driving in the Arizona, Nevada and California deserts in 40C+ heat, where exactly could you find somewhere to take a nap or several naps? it seems impractical to me.

If I only had the feeling of being awake when I thought I was driving fine at 130kph in Italy while caffeinated, but was in fact nowhere near as awake as I felt I was, and I was being totally misled by my perceptions of how well I was driving, what do you think? Am I actually drugged out with painkillers in intensive care right now, imagining that I am typing this to you at this very minute? Or was my feeling of being awake entirely accurate and were my perceptions unaffected?

To my mind, we have perceptions and we have reality. If one's perceptions don't match reality at high speed, then one will most likely wind up dead.
Regards,
Renato

 

[puppysparkes]

Ultimately it seems that the delivery mechanism of caffeine and the drive time are the debating points....

 

[david1]

"Caffeinated substances are associated with a reduced risk of crashing for long distance commercial motor vehicle drivers."
This means that using caffeine reduces crashes. Was this not what was in my Original and subsequent posts consistent with that?

No, it means caffeinated substances are associated with a reduced risk. It doesn't claim causation, it doesn't say that using caffeinated substances causes a reduced risk of crashing. The sentence "A reduced risk of crashing is associated with using caffeinated substances for long distance commercial motor vehicle drivers" has the same meaning as the quoted sentence, but that doesn't mean that a reduced risk of crashing causes use of caffeinated substances.

"the use of caffeinated substances could be a useful adjunct strategy in the maintenance of alertness while driving"
This means that using caffeine keeps one more alert. Was this not what was in my Original and subsequent posts?

No, this means that there is a possibility that caffeinated substances could be usefully added to a strategy intended to maintain alertness while driving.

 

[russ]

"Adjunct" means "joined or associated, especially in an auxiliary or subordinate relationship."

It seems to me that you are using No-Doz as a complete strategy, not an adjunct strategy.
If you are using it as an adjunct strategy, can you please let us know what your primary strategy is? It certainly doesn't seem to be any kind of fatigue management I am familiar with.

 

[Virgin Bart]

This thread is stupid, I'm out.

 

[yohy?!]

This thread seems to be becoming the "Ask the Pilot" of No-Doz

 

[Princess Fiona]

Uhhhmm - have you ACTUALLY read what you have quoted to me?
"Caffeinated substances are associated with a reduced risk of crashing for long distance commercial motor vehicle drivers."
This means that using caffeine reduces crashes. Was this not what was in my Original and subsequent posts consistent with that?

"the use of caffeinated substances could be a useful adjunct strategy in the maintenance of alertness while driving"
This means that using caffeine keeps one more alert. Was this not what was in my Original and subsequent posts?

Regards,
Renato

Yes I read and understood the paper.
An "association" in a research paper does not mean that one thing causes the other.
Here's some more reading which explains it.
Association, correlation and causation

 

[Pushka]

My niece has a PhD in sleep disorders and currently works in a Uni sleep research Unit. Shall ask her.

 

[Skyring]

You assert that caffeine gives one the feeling of being awake, and that perceptions are altered too.
Any evidence for this?

While your tips for taking naps is great for when driving around where you live, how is that practical for someone like me who has never been able to take such naps?

For someone like yourself who can take naps, when in my circumstances of driving in the Arizona, Nevada and California deserts in 40C+ heat, where exactly could you find somewhere to take a nap or several naps? it seems impractical to me.

If I only had the feeling of being awake when I thought I was driving fine at 130kph in Italy while caffeinated, but was in fact nowhere near as awake as I felt I was, and I was being totally misled by my perceptions of how well I was driving, what do you think? Am I actually drugged out with painkillers in intensive care right now, imagining that I am typing this to you at this very minute? Or was my feeling of being awake entirely accurate and were my perceptions unaffected?

To my mind, we have perceptions and we have reality. If one's perceptions don't match reality at high speed, then one will most likely wind up dead.
Regards,
Renato

Maybe you are a freak of nature and can drive safely at high speed for hours at a time day after day.

Caffeine alters my perception of the world. Maybe you're different. I dunno.

If you want to make your holidays into driving marathons, it's a poor way to see the land in fleeting glimpses. I won't drive for more than about six hours a day, preferably with a co-driver. Stopping and exploring and taking photographs and relaxing is what makes the trip.

In a week or so, I'll jump in the car and drive up to Queensland. Fourteen hours, a lot of it on freeways. There'll be the three of us taking turns, two hours or so at a stretch, and we'll stop regularly. A route that's very familiar to us, and we'll have audiobooks to while away the hours.

I wouldn't dream of doing it by myself in one go, though.

 

[cove]

Trying to go too far is not an idea we would try. You need to realise life is not a dress rehearsal.
Having had two near death experiences have certainly helped make me conservative in my thinking and I don't use stimulants for driving long distances. It is downright risky to others on the road and stopping when tired always works.
Stay alive and live the dream is what I am thinking.

 

[artemis]

Renato,

I assume you're simply trolling people with this thread.

But if you're not, here's my $0.02:



If you feel that you cannot drive safely without the use of stimulants, you shouldn't drive.

If you feel that it is your advancing age that is limiting your ability to drive, you should probably submit yourself for further drivers' licence testing.

Advancing age doesn't just impair your tolerance for long-distance driving, but also the speed of your reflexes, and your ability to make appropriate judgements.

Although you allege that your brain has appropriate stimulants and glucose, that doesn't necessarily mean that your higher function centres are working well.

It seems to me that this is the second post within a year bemoaning your reducing abilities in the face of advancing age, so perhaps you should restrict yourself to more age- and ability-appropriate pursuits. Especially when you've admitted that you have disc issues that may impair your lower limb function ie the ability to move your feet quickly from accelerator to brake.

http://www.australianfrequentflyer....flying-emirates-start-training-now-70245.html

Also I would recommend that you see your GP, because perhaps you need different medication and a cardiovascular review, rather than high doses of caffeine and its attendant risks/side-effects.

If this wasn't an anonymous forum, I'd be obligated to report you to the state Transport/Driving License authority.

Otherwise, good troll! I love how you fit the stereotypical grumpy-old-man role perfectly!

 

[Pushka]

It just occurred to me. Renato, didn't you struggle physically with a bus ride to the plane in Dubai? On the way to Venice and something we had done and while a longish bus trip, it was in our experience, not arduous. And I think you are about my age.

Maybe you need to rethink all this. A reality check. Before you kill someone.

 

[love_the_life]

I have resisted posting on this thread because when I read the OP I thought, 'Not for real! It's a wind-up'. The longer the discussion has gone on, the more I am convinced. If not, I just hope I never cross paths with the OP as I think our fundamental views of what constitutes responsible behaviour are totally opposite. Given the previous posts by this person I still think I am correct

 

[mannej]

You forget - I had an independent objective observer sitting next to me, who's life was dependent on my safe driving. She won't ever drive in Italy, and on those long drives in Italy and USA she far preferred me driving with No-Doz, than me driving without it.
Regards,
Renato

Whilst you state your wife is independent in your opinion, I don't think you can in any honesty say she is an impartial party that can verify your claims.

 

[straitman]

My niece has a PhD in sleep disorders and currently works in a Uni sleep research Unit. Shall ask her.

Yes please.

Hi Bill,
In your parallel you have healthy individuals being deprived of oxygen to the point of being unconcious - and they don't know it.
And while being deprived of oxygen they write stuff they think makes sense, but it turns out to be gibberish.
In both cases, while they may have known what was going to happen to them, they didn't know when it did actually happen to them. They didn't know at the actual time that they were going from bad to worse.

Just as you don't know.

Are you saying that in my caffeinated state i may have thought I was doing a good job of driving, but that I was deluding myself like your oxygen deprivation crew was doing to themselves?

You forget - I had an independent objective observer sitting next to me, who's life was dependent on my safe driving. She won't ever drive in Italy, and on those long drives in Italy and USA she far preferred me driving with No-Doz, than me driving without it.
Regards,
Renato

They also independent expert observers who were unable to help them.

This test can be done quickly or very slowly and the outcome is always the same. Sharp and fast is not really a parallel but slow and insidious is a parallel.

Thank you for making my case for me.

 

[Simo]

No, I avoid driving when I'm tired and don't drive without sufficient breaks.

I would be too afraid of the potential consequences for myself and other road users driving whilst tired or using stimulants to keep me awake.

Fully agree...

I would rather stop and have a rest the be dead on time.

 

[BriarFlyer]

My front seat passenger keeps sleeping on those long trips.
Regards,
Renato

Sleeping while being an "independent objective observer." Cool skills.

(Seriously, this thread has to be a wind-up.)