A mother and her 10 month old daughter in Kansas are killed when an 18 wheeler truck collides with their sports utility vehicle. A Tennessee highway patrolman dies when an 18 wheeler veers off the road and strikes him as he guards a construction zone. What do these ,and many other, fatalities have in common? The drivers of the big rigs were previously diagnosed with sleep apnea, but were driving anyway.
In the Kansas case, the driver did not disclose his condition to the doctor who issued a medical certificate for him to drive. The driver who killed the Tennessee patrolman had been involved in a similar crash before.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has been considering new rules that would require screening of drivers whose body mass index exceeds the baseline for obesity, a strong predictor for sleep apnea. Researchers at Harvard University support mandatory testing for obese truck drivers arguing that the screening will prevent truck crashes that kill or injure thousands each year.
Sleep apnea increases the risk of an accident by 2 to 7 times. Nationally, up to 20% of the 141,000 truck crashes annually are estimated to be caused by drivers who fall asleep.
The problem is larger than you might think. Studies suggest that nearly 28% of commercial truck drivers have mild to severe sleep apnea. Considering the size of the trucking industry, that works out to nearly 3.9 million affected drivers. Since only about 10% of all apnea sufferers are actually diagnosed, the problem could be even worse. Even the American Trucking Association supports detection and prevention screening for apnea, recognizing the serious peril sleepy drivers present to us all.
Richard J. Arsenault, 2011
