New mums a driving 'hazard'

Melbourne, January 29 (ANI): New mothers can be as bad as drunk people while driving cars, a new study claims.

Dr Kerry Armstrong and Dr Simon Smith, from the Queensland University of Technology's Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety, insist that fatigue can increase risk of car accidents among women who have just become mothers.

The experts studied 24 mothers aged 22 to 39 to learn that partum fatigue showed till 12 weeks in women after they gave birth.

It was assumed earlier that it disappeared after six weeks.

Armstrong said the mothers had reported living in a "mental haze" and "moving through the day like you're on autopilot," due to lifestyle changes, interrupted sleep, lack of routine.

"Clearly this raises concerns for driving tasks, which for an experienced driver is largely an automatic process," the Courier Mail quoted Armstrong as saying.

She added: "To put the danger of fatigue into some sort of perspective - if someone is awake for 17 hours they have a driving performance similar to that of a person with a blood alcohol level of 0.05 per cent.

"And if they have been awake for 24 hours it is 0.1 per cent, or two times the legal driving limit.

"This has serious implications for mothers suffering from interrupted sleep patterns, night after night and sometimes for several years." (ANI)