Sleep related incidents

6th August 2025

Our Ref: FOI2025/05958

Request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 Ref No: FOI2025/05958   

I write in connection with your request for information received on 10th July.  I note you seek access to the following information:

I am writing to update and clarify my request for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. 

The purpose of this request is to gather data on the number of emergency service callouts linked to sleep, fatigue or tiredness in the region.

Similar information has previously been released under the Freedom of Information Act: “Out of the 21 UK constituencies that responded to a Freedom of Information request, Thames Valley recorded the highest number of fatigue-related accidents over the three-year time period with nearly 400 accidents, while Surrey reported the highest number of fatalities.”

Specifically, I am seeking anonymised data on the following:

The total number of incidents attended by your service where sleep, fatigue or driving while tired was recorded as a factor for each of the past five calendar years (2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and partial data for 2025 if available)

Incidents could include, but are not limited to: Falling asleep while driving, road traffic collisions where driver fatigue was cited, etc

If there is no specific marker or code for “sleep” or “fatigue”, I would be grateful if you could instead provide the number of incidents in which any relevant fatigue-related terms were noted in officer or incident logs—e.g., via keyword search for: “sleep”, “fatigue”, “tired”, “exhaustion”, “drowsy”, etc.

I am required by the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (The Act) to handle all requests in a manner that is blind to the identity of the requestor. Any information released in response to a request is regarded as being published and therefore, in the public domain without caveat.

Response - Following enquiries within the Constabulary please see our response below.

Please note we cannot make any claims about the context for example whether the term was mentioned because it was being given as a possible cause, or for some other reason as this would involve reviewing every incident and would take the request over cost, therefore we can only say the term(s) are mentioned in some context.

The numerical data presented in this response is an un-audited snapshot of un-published data sourced from "live" systems and is subject to the interpretation of the original request by the individual extracting the data.