Skip to main content

New Zealand woman manages to text while sleeping – and driving 187 miles

woman from new zealand managed to text and drive while sleeping for 187 miles asleep at the wheel
Image used with permission by copyright holder

We’ve all been there: You’ve got a long road trip to tackle and you gotta get an early start. A vast stretch of highway as straight-tipped as an Eagle Scout awaits you. You’ve come prepared with a giant mug of coffee, a few energy bars and a great soundtrack to keep you jazzed and awake. But the ever-so persistent grasp of sleepiness inevitably catches up with you. Your feel as if 50 pound weights were taped to your eyelids, and your neck begins to bob and sway like a dashboard hula dancer.

At that point, you make the intelligent move to veer to the side of the road and rest. Disaster averted. Right? Not for a driver in New Zealand.

According to The New Zealand Herald via Yahoo News, a woman drove 300 kilometers (about 186 miles) while fast asleep.

While that’s impressive in its own right, the woman also somehow managed to send her friend text messages along the way while sleep-driving. We suppose her candidacy for Driver of the Year would have been a lock if she also thrown back a couple of cold ones and did her makeup, too.

As it turns out though, the woman had a sleeping disorder and decided to take sleeping pills before her drive, which always seems like the right choice before any drive. While her medication was not identified, there have been reports in the past of people sleep-driving after taking Ambien.

Apparently, New Zealand police were alerted to the issue shortly after midnight by a friend of the woman who had received incoherent text messages from her.

The woman was eventually found by her cousin happily snoring away while slumped over the wheel of the car outside her former residence. Police say after they woke her up, the woman said she had no memory of the incident. Neither the driving nor the texting could be recalled. Thankfully, and somewhat miraculously, nobody was hurt. There was no word on if the car was damaged in any way during the somnambulant escapades.

The woman has yet to be fined or charged with anything but police have banned her from driving until they can obtain medical confirmation concerning her condition and determine whether or not she should drive.

We’re gonna go with our gut on this one and say she should probably ride in the passenger seat until things get sorted out.

Topics
Amir Iliaifar
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Associate Automotive Section Editor for Digital Trends, Amir Iliaifar covers the ever increasing cross-section between tech…
The Kia EV3 could be the cheap electric SUV we’ve been waiting for
White Kia EV3

The Kia EV9 was already one of the cheapest ways to get an electric SUV, but now the company is taking things to the next level. After teasing the Kia EV3 last year, the car is now official.

The EV3 is built to be a slightly smaller, cheaper version of the EV9 -- following the path of the Rivian R2, which arrived after the Rivian R1S. It's certainly not as technologically advanced as the EV9, but it still looks unmistakably like a modern Kia, and is clearly a sibling of the larger SUV. On the outside, the vehicle has the same split taillights and very similar Tiger Face front. But it is quite a bit smaller. The vehicle will be available in nine finishes -- however only "Aventurine Green" and "Terracotta" are being announced right now.

Read more
Kia EV3: release date, performance, range, and more
White Kia EV3

Kia is on a roll. Hot on the heels of the success of the Kia EV6 and EV9, the company is already announcing what could be its cheapest electric vehicle yet -- the Kia EV3.

The Kia EV line seems to follow the rule of lower numbers indicating a lower price — and if so, the EV3 will end up being the cheapest electric car Kia has released to date. That, however, thankfully doesn’t mean that the EV3 will be a low-end car — it just means that Kia may be pushing the boundaries on electric car pricing.

Read more
Kia EV3 vs Tesla Model Y: Can Kia’s new entry-level car take on Tesla?
White Kia EV3

The Kia EV3 is finally coming, and it could well end up being the best small-size electric SUV to buy when it finally rolls out. It's smaller than the Kia EV9, but it offers many of the same design elements and features. But there's another small-size electric car that's currently one of the most popular vehicles out there -- the Tesla Model Y.

How does the Kia EV3 compare with the Tesla Model Y? And is one vehicle actually better than the other? We put the Kia EV3 and the Tesla Model Y head-to-head to find out.
Design
The design of the Kia EV3 is very different than that of the Model Y, though they're both reasonably good-looking vehicles.

Read more