What does fatigue cause?

• A. Errors related to speed and distance, increases your risk of being in a crash, and causes you to take more time to make decisions, which can make you more irritable and make you get upset more easily
• B. Improved reaction time.
• C. No effect on driving.
• D. Only affects nighttime driving.

Answer: (A)

Fatigue slows your thinking and weakens your ability to process what’s happening around you. When you’re tired, your attention wanders more easily, your perception of speed and distance becomes less accurate, and your reaction time to hazards increases. That combination makes it harder to maintain a safe following distance, respond to brake lights or lane changes in time, and judge the right speed for the situation. Because decisions take longer to reach, you may brake or steer too late, increasing the chance of a crash. Fatigue can also make you feel irritable or easily upset, which can further cloud judgment and lead to poorer driving choices. This explains why fatigue is linked to errors in speed and distance, higher crash risk, slower decision-making, and irritability. It’s not something that only affects nighttime driving, and it certainly doesn’t improve reaction time.