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I once got a call at 2:15am. A friend needed a ride home from Charlotte, over two hours away. I did not own a car, which was a high but not insurmountable hurdle (my hallmates were loose with their keys.) I was half-asleep, meaning the next few hours would be a high-stakes game of keeping my eyes open.
After stocking up on Cherry Coke and a variety of Snapple Iced-T flavors, I hit the road. The other half of my anti-sleep effort was to play one album on repeat, trying to learn all the lyrics. If I messed up, I started over. One of the few CDs at my disposal was The Immaculate Collection, Madonna’s 1990 greatest hits album. It did the job. We did not crash. And we arrived back in Durham around sunrise.
Now thanks to the Denso Corporation, there’s a more humane system, as Tim Moran reported in Sunday’s New York Times.
“The car is warm and the engine hums. Your eyelids slowly close. And then, there’s a sudden puff of air on the back of your neck. The steering wheel vibrates in your hands and a buzzer sounds. Your car is waking you. The car has been watching your face and, through the steering wheel, feeling your pulse. It knew you were about to fall asleep.”
So instead of listening to sixty miles of “Express Yourself,” you’ll soon be able to put your car on vibrate. Though my experience taught me a valuable lesson: don’t answer your phone at 2:15am.
Wow, not only are you a great friend (wanna be friends?) but I need those features on my Jeep!
posted by Priscilla on 3-14-2007 at 10:48 am
This may sound odd, but I drive a lot (7 hour commute every couple weeks) and the way I stay awake when driving in the wee hours is sunflower seeds and a beverage (usually mountain dew for me). Shelling the seeds with my teeth keeps me awake and focused.
posted by FB on 3-14-2007 at 5:11 pm
That’s funny– in the past, I used the exact same technique to stay awake, but with REM’s “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)”. That’s a great song to try to teach yourself to sing, with long passages of hard-to-remember and harder-to-understand lyrics.
The last time I needed to drive through the night, I attempted to train myself to say the alphabet backwards as fast as I could. I suppose this could have been even more helpful if I had pulled over for a sobriety checkpoint. Even though I was totally sober, I almost wish I had been pulled over and asked to say it backwards just to show off my ~3 second delivery. Almost.
posted by Garrett on 3-15-2007 at 1:32 pm
Oh my god, I used to own the Immaculate Collection too! What a horrible way to spend the night! I use the sunflower seed method too.
posted by Kali on 3-15-2007 at 3:38 pm