Falling asleep at the wheel may be caused by 'sameness', no variance in your environment, coupled with a constant drone of vehicular noise. When this happens to you with no traffic around you, it is sometimes called "highway hypnosis". Some drivers get lured into this condition by the steady passing of the dashed center line. Not enough sleep/rest the night before is a factor. Low blood sugar is a possibility. I don't know any cure. I only know what works for me. it helps if I stop, and exercise a bit to increase my blood circulation - wake up the body. The exercise can be as simple as brisk walk or trot around the parking lot. If you still feel sleepy, its time to park it and catch a nap. The company I worked for (before retiring) was working on a "drowsy driver detection" system mainly for the trucking industry. They were doing research to find what to monitor to detect when a driver was about to nod off. I'm not privy to all the details, but I think a couple of items were the driver's eyelids and head tilt. It had to work without attaching anything to the driver. One hurdle was to get drivers to accept the system. Many saw it as an invasion of 'their space" and a fear that the data would be collected and used against them. This work took place several years ago, and I don't know the outcome. I have seen no announcements or advertisements.

Just in case you are still following this thread, I've got another possibility for you. Celiac Disease is a grossly underdiagnosed autoimmune disease estimated to affect 1 in 133 Americans. Most people have never heard of this disease. It often causes gastrointestinal symptoms, as well as vague whole body symptoms. October happens to be Celiac awareness month. I'll attach a link to the Mayo clinic. It is highly treatable. (I also had the NEED to fall asleep after high carb meals before I was diagnosed). I hope whatever it is, he finds relief. Here is a link that might be useful: Mayo Clinic Link

I understand exactly what you're thinking of doing! I am sure that this can be done, but it might require a furniture-maker to arrange the frame correctly. If you are handy though, I don't see why you couldn't make it work. Could your upholsterer come over and share his opinion? Our guy both could and would do that (come over *and* rebuild the piece). We are planning to do the same thing, only with a new sofa, because of my issues with arthritis and a bad back, to give me lots of support in bed. Our favorite local furniture dealer said that he'd be able to get us the upholstered frame only of any sofa we wanted. The only thing we'd need to do is get accurate measurements so that our queen mattress and box spring would slide in. Of course, it will look like an always open sleeper sofa, but with the right combo of upholstery and bed linens, that would be fine with me. Good luck with your quest. I'll be interested in knowing what happens.

socks, I thought I'd try the shower rods first as it was a lot cheaper than buying anything else, and luckily, they work for us. raven, I was trying to keep my post from being too long, but I actually did start out doing exactly what you described with a nice piece of fabric covering the rods. Oddly enough, with fabric over the rods, my largest dog just jumped over them, with no reluctance. But without the fabric, none of the dogs are willing to go under, through or over the bars. Maybe without the fabric covering, they think the rods are electrified? peonies, I might take down the highest rod in a few weeks and see what happens. If my cocker spaniel doesn't jump over it, I'll take away the middle rod as well. Maybe I'll be lucky like you were with the piece of board and be able to remove all of them once the dogs are conditioned not to enter that room snidely, all 3 were rescued as adult dogs and 2 would surely be diagnosed with A.D.H.D. if they were human! Those 2 do not listen to verbal commands very well, and I admit I do not have the patience it would take to train them as you suggested, which would of course be the optimal solution. jannie, unfortunately, my shower rods won't be a solution for keeping toddlers out of a room as a child would probably try to scale them and could get hurt. Luckily, my dogs seem to fear something about them and won't even try to get past them!