Driver Fatigue - Road Trips

[new2ford]

Originally Posted by Big Damo

The furthest I've ever driven in one hit was 400km,

I suspect we all did some stupid things when we were young, being "invincible" and all that. I used to drive Melbourne-Sydney before motorways, cameras and all the nannying. My "record" was 9 hours in a P76 V8, that was really flying! But I would have stopped for at least a couple of breaks.

A couple of days ago I did Vienna-Plzen using (rather stupidly, though the scenery was fantastic!) the "shortest route" setting on the GPS. It took 6 hours (320 km) along winding mountainous rural roads, including dense fog for the last third of the trip at night. (The longer motorway route would have been nearly two hours faster!) I think I'm getting a bit old for that sort of hijinks.

Anyway, we had two rest breaks, dividing into 3 x 2 hour stints. That did the trick. One great thing about the GPS is that you can at least see which way the road is pointing when you're in a peasouper. As long as you don't assume there's nothing on the road ahead! But driving in fog is very tiring. If you have constant fog I'd halve the distance you're driving.