Statistical Anomaly

Anyone who looks at timestamps would notice after a while that I'm an early riser. Sometimes, though, it's much too early. When it happens that I wake up after only two to four hours of sleep in the wee hours of the morning, one of two things can happen. I'll either find a renewed need for rest within a few minutes and fall back asleep, or I end up completely awake.

This has been the case most of my life. When I commuted to and from work and sat at a desk all day, I had no trouble with this interfering with my work. If I was still writing software, for instance, I could spend the next 16 hours at this computer and churn out some decent work. But since I drive a taxi now, I've found that the combination of old age and an abbreviated night's sleep adds up to potential danger.

Believe me, I've tried it. You think that you're fine to drive, and the next thing you know you've just sailed through a red light or a stop sign while thinking about where the nearest place is that has a restroom you can use... or whether you payed the phone bill or not... or what a jerk your last passenger was. It's bad enough growing old and finding yourself with an increasing tendency to brazenly believe you can think about anything else but driving while you're driving... this can be done successfully when you're young and foolish... but after a while the statistical anomaly of having never caused an accident in that particular mode of daydreaming will catch up with you if you're not careful.

The odds have stacked up against me when there's a snowstorm and the streets are slippery, too. I've never been hit. But if I tempt fate by driving on the slippery, falling snow in a snowstorm situation, sooner or later my chances of getting hit by someone who doesn't know how to handle a car on slippery roads will finally catch up with me. The odds caught up with my wife a few years ago when she was working for Memorial Home Health and was on the road every day. Somebody who didn't know how to drive in the snow hit her while she waited patiently, stopped at the curb, hoping that idiot wouldn't hit her. But sure enough, they ever so slowly slid sideways down Pilgrim Ave and right into her car. Nobody got hurt, but the statistical probability was served its ultimate validity. Up to that point, she had never been hit.

It's all just a matter of simple statistical probability. If I drive on slippery roads, the odds of my being hit keep going up. Likewise, if I drive when I haven't had enough sleep, the odds of my causing an accident keep going up.

I'm sure there's some actuarial data somewhere that could yield the statistics on how many accidents a person can expect to be involved in during their lifetime, keyed to how often they drive, how many miles per year, whether they're male or female, and maybe even how often they blog... And it would probably be useful to know what my chances are of having an accident, whether it's slippery out or not, whether I'm fully rested or not, and regardless of how many times I post to my blog each day. But it's a sure bet that the odds are against me remaining accident-free, the older I get. Every year added to my accident-free driving record pushes me closer and closer to being a statistical anomaly.

What I can do to counter those odds is to not drive when I'm not fully rested. It's the least I can do for the guy who owns the cab, and the public at large.

Between typing and daydreaming, it's taken me three times as long to get this post written than it would've if I had gotten a full night's sleep. But then, (heh) if I had gotten a full night's rest, I wouldn't have written it at all.