“Busy night-time routines are driving couples’ bedtimes and even their bedrooms apart,” the British media quoted Jessica Alexander of the Sleep Council, which carried out the study, as saying.

In their study, the researchers surveyed 1,400 people in Britain between Feb 27 and March three.

They found that one in ten couples sleep in different beds every night while a quarter admit to doing so on a daily basis; four in ten people go to bed at a different time to their partner.

“With sleep deprivation we are going to have delayed reaction times, we want to be more aware when driving into work, we’ll be a little more compromised, be more careful driving into work, be more prone to accidents while at work, particularly those who work in the industrial sector, working with machinery,” he said.

The devices monitor body indicators during a patient’s sleep, such as blood-oxygen levels, nose airflow pressure and whether air passages are obstructed. They feed the information to specialists via the internet.

They are being trialled in the forehead of nasal masks already worn by patients with sleep apnoea, a common condition where breathing difficulties disrupt sleeping patterns.

Among the survey’s findings:

Dangers on the road. Thirty-six percent of respondents say they have nodded off or fallen asleep while driving, including 26% who say they drive drowsy during the workday.

Work performance. Twelve percent of respondents have arrived late to work in the past month because of sleepiness. Other problems cited: impatience with others, difficulty concentrating on job tasks and lower productivity.

Work hours. Employees with more than one job report the highest rate of dissatisfaction with sleep: 43% say they get a good night’s sleep only a few nights per month or less. Part-time workers report the highest rate of sleep satisfaction.