Sleep apnea makes 18 wheeler drivers even more dangerous
It’s bad enough that 18 wheelers, semi trucks, big rigs and tractor trailers are slaughtering thousands of innocents on America’s roads and highways. Now we learn that our beef with the trucking business may include beefy drivers.
Sleep scientists at Harvard University have discovered a strong link between overweight drivers and apnea sleep, a sleep disorder which puts drivers at high risk of driving while asleep at the wheel. As MSNBC reports, at Harvard they’re calling for mandatory testing of obese drivers, which they believe will help reduce the 5,200 deaths and 100,000 injuries yearly in this country’s large truck accidents.
Certainly, it’s important to monitor sleep apnea or apnea sleep for any driver of any vehicle. But when you drive a multi-ton rig which can wipe out several families due to a momentary snooze, and you drive for many hours each day and night, such vigilance is even more needed.
The Harvard researchers studied 456 drivers working for 50 trucking firms. Apparently many such drivers were overweight, which can contribute to the sleep disorder called apnea, in which a person’s air passages shut down briefly through the night. Such sleep disorder sufferers awake repeatedly and thus are sleep-deprived — not to mention oxygen deprived.
This is an even bigger problem when coupled with the kind of driver fatigue experienced perhaps more by large truck drivers than by any others, given the unrealistic deadlines which push them to perform for long hours behind the wheel. When a truck driver does fall asleep, his or her vehicle becomes the biggest out-of-control killing machine on the road. And even before that, fatigued truck drivers are likely to be extremely hazardous while half-awake, due to slowed reaction times.
As usual, the trucking industry resists placing any constraints on its ability to move tons of cargo across the country, even when there’s such “collateral damage” as 5,200 deaths and 100,000 injuries. So far it’s balking at the idea of testing truck drivers for obesity, which is when the body mass index baseline is 30, as occurs when a six-foot-tall man weights 221 pounds.
Yet even though many big rig drivers are overweight and are prone to sleep apnea driving, their industry doesn’t want to single them out. It’s all about their individual driving skills, some say, not sleep disorders. Well, tell that to the1,000-plus Americans killed each year when truck drivers fall asleep at the wheel.
Note to the trucking industry: The Harvard researchers say as many as one in five tractor trailer accident crashes involves a truck driver who falls asleep at the wheel. They also say more than a fourth of all truck drivers may suffer from some degree of apnea sleep or sleep apnea. So if you want to save more than 1,000 lives annually, get busy, because that’s what’s called a major problem. Do you really want to ignore that problem, trucking industry?
Thankfully, not everyone does.
Definitely not ignoring trucking terrors on America’s roads are the 18 wheeler accident lawyers and personal injury attorneys at Jim S. Adler & Associates. Also doing some good are such trucking firms as Swift Transportation Corp. of Phoenix, which is voluntarily screening and treating its drivers for sleep apnea and other sleep disorders. This can involve providing a driver with a mask to wear at night which will inflate his airways and thus enhance his level of oxygen during sleep time, which often occurs while he’s sleeping inside the cab of his truck as it’s parked off the road.
Meanwhile, innocent motorists remain at risk from the barrelling behemoths known as tractor trailers, semi trucks, big rigs or 18 wheelers. If you or a loved one has suffered from such a vehicle in a tractor trailer accident or other large truck accident, take charge and alert a tractor trailer lawyer or semi truck accident attorney with Jim S. Adler & Associates. Then let the trucking business know that you, at least, won’t fall asleep at the wheel of your life.
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Three years ago, we determined that the relationship between core body temperature and the ability to drift off to comfortable sleep could be disrupted by applying carefully regulated chilling to the skin over the shin bone. Although the scientific literature implied a relationship (with drug therapy, for post menopausal women) between core body temperature to increase comfort and warming of the shin for assisting in sleep disorders, no one had (or has, at the time of our patent filing) asserted the opposite. Our initial tests showed that it was possible to chill specific areas of the shin and disrupt the body’s ability to regulate core temperature. That inability perforce disabled the body’s capability to go to sleep. As we perfected the device, we also perfected our test techniques. Our latest tests have showed two items of particular note for automotive safety. First, the device prevents sleep and increases alertness, which is critical to automotive driver safety. Second, perhaps equally important given the precedence of alcohol related fatalities, there is a marked increase in alertness even with the consumption of alcohol.
Our device is essentially a leg wrap that directs a chilled medium (we have air and water variants of the invention) to the (bare) shin. The controls are a closed loop electronics module that takes a temperature from the (bare) stomach and correlates it to the desired maximum chill temperature on the shin. The logic device in the controller varies the shin temperature in order to maintain core body temperature disruption. The device simply prevents the body from achieving core temperature comfort. If the body is unable to reach core comfort temperature, it cannot sleep. The positive benefits are a prevention of sleep and microsleep incidents while driving as well as a measurable increase in alertness. Every driver should want to use the device while driving long distances or at night. Some professions such as truck driving are a natural fit, but the device could be used for others on second and third shifts in any environment.