In a new study published in the American Journal of Public Health, researchers with the University of Washington’s school of pharmacy found that taking the sleeping pills, such as Ambien and Restoril, can double a person’s risk of being in a car crash.

Thanks to embarrassing political scandals, we all know that taking a drive after popping an ambien is a bad idea because you are probably sleepwalking (in fact, I would argue that doing anything after taking an Ambien or while sleepwalking, for that matter, is inadvisable), but these new findings show that the risk of crashing remains high even hours after the medications have supposedly worn off. In fact, researchers say that driving the day after having taken a sleeping pill can be as risky as driving drunk.

The study inspected the medical and driving records of 400,000 drivers in Washington State who took any one of the three popular sleeping aids: zolpidem (brand name Ambien) trazodone (brand name Oleptro or Desyrel), and temazepam, (brand name Restoril). The researchers found that the people taking these medications had anywhere between a 25 percent and three times higher risk of being involved in a car accident.

In an interview with NBC News, UW’s Ryan Hansen, who led the study, said, "We found that each of the medications independently was associated with an increased risk of motor vehicle crashes.”

Just two years ago, the FDA told pharmaceutical companies to decrease the recommended doses of sleeping pills because of research showing they can stay in the bloodstream at levels high enough to impact driving the following day. Obviously, this wasn’t good. What the new study shows is that even when the dose is reduced to the lowest possible, people should still know that their driving can be impacted.

Broken down by each type of sleeping pills, the results over a five-year period are as follows:

• Restoril (temazepam) users had a 27 percent higher risk of being involved in a crash over the five years studied.
• Oleptro or Desyrel (trazodone) users had a 91 percent higher risk–nearly double that of non-users.
• Ambien (zolpidem) users were more than twice as likely as non-users to be involved in a crash.

The scientists noted that these risk numbers are equivalent to blood alcohol concentration levels between 0.06 percent and 0.11 percent. To put this in perspective, the legal limit for blood alcohol while driving is 0.08 percent in all U.S. states. Hansen noted that, as with drunk driving, the sleeping medications “make you slow to react to complex situations in driving.”

The good news is that these risks seem to be limited to new users of the drugs, as the lingering effects seem to be something that either decreases or people develop a tolerance to over time. For new users, though, these drugs stay in the blood for a long time: "And so, they can have a variety of impacts on risk of crash, including people waking up in the middle of night without knowing it and driving, or waking up in the morning and driving to work and being slightly impaired by the medication still," Hansen said.

The study confirms that driving under the influence of sleeping medications is bad because the sedatives stay in your system, making you a drowsy driver. The National Sleep Foundation warns that the effects of simply driving while sleepy is a huge risk factor for accidents, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration conservatively estimates that 100,000 crashes a year are due to drowsy drivers. The CDC says that lack of sleep is a public health crisis in America, and 50–70 million adults have some sort of sleep disorder, such as insomnia or sleep apnea. With statistics like these, it’s no wonder that people turn to sleeping pills to get more sleep. But, paradoxically, it seems that the very aids that are supposed to make us less sleepy are contributing to the problem of drowsy driving.

So, what are tired Americans supposed to do? Hansen suggests, “There are many approaches to the management of insomnia, including lifestyle changes such as cutting caffeine intake and exercising, which may alleviate the insomnia without medications.” Still, for some people, the only way to get sleep can be with the aid of a sleeping medication. For those people, the study advises awareness and an honest appraisal of risks by prescribers:

“Depending on an individual’s need to drive regularly, combined with a medical indication for sedative use, the choice of a particular sedative may affect the risk of crashing. Prescribers, pharmacists and patients should discuss this potential risk and consider the implications of this analysis when selecting a sedative hypnotic medication."

For new users, sleeping pills may double car crash risk