Security Driver: Could Poor Sleep Habits Make You A Statistic?

By Anthony Ricci

Whether Law Enforcement or Security Driver, both jobs require alertness, good reaction times, and attention to detail for quick decision-making. If you are fatigued on the job, you will react more slowly to situations and experience tunnel vision, micro sleeps, and forgetfulness. If any of these things are being experienced while driving you may be at risk of crashing. This is not done out of malice it is unfortunately part of the job. Many departments are down hundreds of officers and many will do details opposite their shift since there is no one to work them.

As a Security Driver for a corporation many times you are stuck working a night event until eleven pm. Following the event, you drive the boss home and still have an hour and a half commute to your own home. You are then grabbing a three-hour nap and getting back in your car to pick him back up for work. If you’re the CEO of a fortune 100 company you didn’t get there without being a hard driver. The CEO will be ready and the driver better be on time. This puts workers in both professions in a tough spot when it comes down to drowsy driving. While we can recommend good quality sleep, provide employee training on sleep deprivation, allowing a break room or ample rest breaks, encourage peer monitoring, consider developing policies where drivers wear wrist bands that identify driver fatigue. Sometimes these drivers are the only ones in the driver position. Drivers and officers have to really self-r...