How Often Should You Take A Break When Driving?

Not taking enough breaks when driving can be dangerous. Your concentration can falter and lead to a greater chance of being involved in an accident. But just how long behind the wheel without a break is too long? This post takes a look at how often you should ideally be taking a break when driving.

After how many hours of driving should you take a break?

Experts typically recommend taking a 15 minute break from driving every 2 hours in order to stay alert. After this 2 hour period, our focus can deteriorate rapidly. So if you’re on a road trip, make sure you plan to stop every 2 hours. 

It’s worth noting that this rule is not enforced by law and therefore not always respected by companies. In fact, commercial drivers are only required by federal law to take a 30 minute break every 8 hours! 

How many hours of driving should you do per day?

On top of how many consecutive hours you drive per day, it’s worth considering how many total hours you’re driving every day. 8 hours is sometimes considered a healthy limit for the majority of drivers, but some people can drive a lot more hours than this in a day while still concentrating. 

Federal law states that commercial drivers cannot drive for more than 11 hours after a 10 hour off-duty period. This is worth considering as a hard limit for personal driving too.

How many hours of driving should you do in a week?

It’s also important to not spend too many hours behind the wheel per week. If you’re driving 11 hours every day of the week, it could be very unhealthy. Taking a day off from driving every week is encouraged to properly recharge your batteries if you’re driving many hours every week.

The dot 70 hour rule states that you cannot legally drive commercially for more than 70 hours in an 8 day period (or 60 hours in a 7 day period). By clocking exactly how many hour spent working are spent driving, you can make sure that you are not exceeding this

Are you feeling drowsy?

Of course, you should remember that no matter what the rules and guidelines state, you should never drive when feeling drowsy. According to the AAA Foundation, drowsy driving plays a part in almost 328,000 crashes every year, claiming 6,400 lives and injuring 109,000 people annually. 

Falling asleep at the wheel is most common at night on long straight roads (Highway hypnosis is a term sometimes used to describe the hypnotic nature of long straight roads). If you start to feel drowsy, plan to pull over somewhere appropriate and take a nap – turn up the music and open a window until you can safely stop. Getting enough hours of sleep every 24 hour period can help prevent fatigue. Ideally, you should be aiming for a minimum of 6 hours of sleep every day, however 8 is recommended to feel fully well rested.