A driver fell asleep behind the wheel Monday morning and slammed into a dental office on the 2200 block of Page Road in Durham, according to police. The crash happened around 7:45 a.m., when the dental practice was closed, and the driver was taken to a local hospital as a precaution after suffering minor injuries.
Durham Police responded to the scene after the driver’s vehicle ran off the road and struck the building, according to WRAL. The driver told officers he had fallen asleep before losing control, and no other injuries were reported in connection with the crash.
A Familiar Scene on Triangle Roads
This is not the first time this year that a Triangle-area driver has plowed into a commercial building. In August, a driver in Raleigh mistook the gas pedal for the brake and slammed a Jeep into a Days Inn motel on Wake Forest Road, damaging several units and prompting a DWI charge against the driver. Just days before the Page Road crash, a Durham driver was killed after their car flew off Garrett Road and hit a fence, a case still being investigated by Durham Police.
Vehicle-into-building crashes like these are far more common nationally than most drivers realize. The Storefront Safety Council estimates that vehicles crash into commercial buildings more than 100 times a day across the United States, causing as many as 16,000 injuries and 2,600 deaths annually, with operator errors and pedal mix-ups among the leading causes. Commercial offices and retail storefronts account for nearly half of those impacts nationwide, largely because parking areas often sit directly in front of building walls.
The Hidden Toll of Drowsy Driving
Falling asleep at the wheel is a far bigger problem than official crash reports suggest. The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety has estimated that drowsy driving contributes to roughly 17.6% of all fatal crashes nationwide, about 30,000 deaths between 2017 and 2021, a figure roughly ten times higher than what police crash reports capture, since officers largely depend on drivers admitting they were tired after the fact…