Are you a morning type of an evening type? If you are an evening type, you may want to avoid driving early in the morning, as according to a new study, night owls are significantly poorer drivers at this time of day.

Spanish researchers looked at the driving performance of people who are considered morning types and those who are considered evening types. If you are a morning type, your body tends to function better at this time, while evening types function better at night.

The researchers assessed the circadian rhythm - the body's internal clock - in 29 people randomly chosen from a sample of 500. The driving abilities of all the participants were assessed at 8am in the morning and 8pm in the evening.

They found that morning people were more stable drivers overall, driving relatively well both in the morning and the evening.

However, the evening types drove much more poorly in the morning than they did at night, largely because they paid far less attention in the morning.

"Certain professions involve performing tasks that require good attention vigilance - airline pilots, air traffic controllers, supervisors in nuclear power stations, surgeons, or lorry drivers. A particular time of day can be a good or a bad time to perform these tasks," the researchers from the University of Granada noted.

They added that driving after 18 hours of being awake ‘entails the same level of risks as driving with the legal maximum level of blood alcohol, because our level of vigilance declines considerably'.

Details of these findings are published in the journal, Accident Analysis and Prevention.