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About this tool
Pre-drive checklist for lights, glass and fatigue, scored with the hours-awake impairment rule and the 02:00–06:00 risk window.
A night driving safety checklist scores a vehicle and its driver before a dark-hours journey, separating equipment faults from fatigue risk. The twenty checks are weighted and the essential ones — working low beams, both brake lights, a windscreen cleaned on the inside, adequate sleep — are reported as blockers rather than lost points. Fatigue is assessed with Dawson and Reid's published finding that 17 hours awake matches roughly 0.05% blood alcohol and 24 hours matches 0.10%, plus the hours your route spends inside the 02:00–06:00 window when sleep-related crashes peak.
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An unlit brake light stops the checklist instead of costing a few percent.
Turns hours awake into a published alcohol-equivalent figure you can act on.
Measures how much of your drive lands in the small-hours risk window.
Depth perception, peripheral vision and colour recognition all fall away in low light, and headlights on low beam typically light only 50–60 metres ahead — less than the stopping distance at highway speed. Add oncoming glare, more fatigued and impaired drivers on the road, and the risk per kilometre driven is several times the daytime rate.
Beyond 17 hours of continuous wakefulness, measured performance matches a blood alcohol concentration of about 0.05%, and by 24 hours it matches roughly 0.10% (Dawson & Reid, Nature 1997). If you woke at 06:00 and plan to drive past 23:00, you are already in that range — and unlike alcohol, fatigue is not something coffee clears.
Take a break of at least 15 minutes every two hours, and stop immediately if you catch yourself drifting, missing signs or blinking hard. A break is a management measure, not a cure — if you are genuinely drowsy the only fix is sleep, and a 20-minute nap in a safe parking area beats another 100 km of willpower.
No. Yellow or amber lenses reduce total light reaching the eye, and controlled studies have found they do not improve night-time hazard detection and can slow it slightly. Use your normal clear prescription, clean both sides of the windscreen, and if oncoming headlights are painful or haloed, get your eyes checked — that pattern often points to cataracts or an outdated prescription.