科学美国人60秒:Drowsy Driving Kills 6,400 Americans Annually

“It's particularly concerning that 56 million Americans a month admit that they drive when they haven't gotten enough sleep and they are exhausted.”Charles Czeisler. He’s the director of the Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
需要特别指出的是，每月有5600万美国人承认他们在开车时没有得到足够的睡眠并且疲惫不堪。”Charles Czeisler说道。他是哈佛医学院睡眠医学部门的主任。

“Eight million of them lose the struggle to stay awake and actually admit to falling asleep at the wheel every month—causing more than a million crashes every year, 50,000 debilitating injuries…and 6,400 deaths.”
他们中的八百万人在开车时都不能够保持清醒，实际上他们承认每个月他们都在驾车时打瞌睡——造成每年发生超过100万次碰撞，导致50,000人虚弱受伤，6,400人死亡。

He spoke at a recent Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Forum called Asleep at the Wheel: Drowsy Driving and Public Health.
他在哈佛公共卫生学院的论坛上发言，命名为睡在方向盘上：疲劳驾驶和公共卫生。

“And we just finally got a consensus group, the first consensus panel of experts, to agree that if an individual has had less than two hours of sleep in the previous 24 hours that that's the equivalent of being negligent and should be added to the statutes. It's just like drunk driving.
并且最终我们达成共识，第一个共识专家小组同意如果在过去的二十四个小时中，一个人睡眠少于两小时，这相当于过失，应该添加到条例中，就像酒驾。

“So there are three groups that are particularly vulnerable. Young people think that because they're young, they're fit—they can do anything—that they would be the most resilient in the face of sleep deprivation. But actually young people are the most vulnerable…there's actually a biological reason…so as we get older we lose cells in the sleep switch in the brain, in the hypothalamus, that help us make the transition from wakefulness to sleep…when we keep an 18-year-old awake all night and compare that to keeping a 70-year-old awake all night, the 18-year-old will have 10 times as many involuntary lapses of attention than the older person. So young people are more vulnerable, not less, to the effects of sleep deprivation.
有三组群体是特别脆弱的，年轻人认为他们年轻，他们很健康，可以做任何事情，在应对睡眠不足方面，他们最有“弹性”。但实际上年轻人是最脆弱的。这是有生物依据的。当我们变老，我们大脑中下丘脑的睡眠切换细胞丧失，这些细胞可以帮助我们完成睡眠上的切换，从清醒状态转入睡眠状态。当我们让一位18岁的年轻人彻夜不眠，与让一位70岁的老人彻夜不眠相比，其不自主性的意识丧失是70岁老人的10倍。因此年轻人更加脆弱，失眠对年轻人的影响更加严重。

“The second group that is particularly vulnerable are night shift workers…and the third group that is particularly vulnerable are people with sleep disorders, particularly sleep apnea. One out of three men and one out of six women have sleep apnea. And yet, 85 percent are undiagnosed and untreated. And it more than doubles the risk of crashes.”
第二组特别脆弱的群体是夜班工人。第三组是睡眠障碍患者，尤其是睡眠呼吸暂停综合症患者。有三分之一的男性和六分之一的女性患有睡眠呼吸暂停综合症。然而，85%的人们没有得到诊断和治疗，并且这会导致发生碰撞危险的概率增加一倍以上。

The entire hour-long forum featuring Czeisler and other researchers discussing drowsy driving is archived on line. Just google “Harvard public health forum”.
整个长达一小时的论坛活动，以Czeisler和其他研究人员们在网上讨论疲劳驾驶被存档为焦点。只需要用google搜索“哈佛大学公共健康论坛”。

—Steve Mirsky
斯蒂夫·米尔斯基报道。