Over the last couple of weeks I have been on the road doing some work for Leighton Mining. As you can imagine, Leighton has a number of sites, and I have been asked to visit each one to pass on my own brand of safety message. Before I go on, I would just like to say thanks to everyone who have made my trips to site worth the drive, it is a pleasure to meet everyone and to share my story.

Whilst you may think that tiredness would be biggest factor in driving long distances, the biggest issue for me is the actual sitting behind the wheel of a car. Which may seem like a rather strange thing to say coming from someone who has to sit down all day, every day. As you know your body needs to circulate blood in order to function properly. Get it wrong and you can feel the "pins and needles". For someone like me who struggles to move "normally" I need to ensure that when I drive for long distances I build in some safe guards so that I can help keep my blood moving. And the way that I do that is by using an alarm I have on my watch.  I set it to go off every two hours and when it does I find a safe place & then stop & get out of the car.

As you can imagine, sometimes the temptation to "Push on" is there, but I know how dangerous that can be, after all we do know that tiredness can kill.

Thankfully the variety of terrain & the change of scenery has been stimulating, which has helped. But it did make me think about how much more tiring it would be if the scenery was the same minute after minute, hour after hour or even day after day!

So I am asking you to think about what you do when you get tired, is it really worth getting there 5 minutes earlier?

I'd say not.

So build in your own safe guards when you are travelling long distances. It might be a pain in the butt, but it saves having one.

James